The Influence of the Erie Canal

Note: Unless otherwise stated, this history comes from Whitford

In the late 18th century in the United States, expansion into the west and business pursuits made people think of ways to tap resources, trade and communicate from east to west and vice-versa.   The Erie Canal was the progenitor of new modes of transportation and communication, and more than all else, stimulating and guiding the nation in its development.   A study of commodity prices affirms that improved transportation materially affected prices and reduced the cost of living throughout the commercial world.

It is well known that the presence of navigable rivers, penetrating the interior from the coastline, has always noticeably affected the development of a country and the movement of population inland.   The United States possesses a wealth of such streams and rivers and its settlements have generally advanced along these waterways and afterwards filled in the intervening territory.

The Appalachian Mountain chain of mountains, however, early presented the one great barrier to progress across the interior of the country and limited trade between the eastern and western regions.   Through this continental divide there are four natural passes, each in the early days traversed by an Indian trail, subsequently expanded into wagon roads.   By far the most favorable of the four is the most northerly along the Mohawk River Valley that lies in the eastern part of New York State and flows into the Hudson River.   This geography incited farsighted men to talk and write about the possibility of building a waterway that would connect the eastern seaboard with the Great Lakes

There are other possible water routes for trade between the east and west.   The St. Lawrence River is the natural outlet of the Great Lakes.   In pre-canal days many interior products found their way to port at Montreal.   George Washington’s chief expectation for the Potomac River Company was that it would capture the Detroit fur trade from Montreal, and the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company later on inherited a similar ambition.   The route of the St. Lawrence River is impeded by obstructions to navigation, but was navigable by the building of several short canals to circumvent rapids.   It is at a disadvantage in being more northerly and necessitating a longer course in restricted channel than the Erie Canal and Hudson River.   Nevertheless, it saves some 450 miles of distance for freight destined for Liverpool compared to the Erie Canal and Hudson River route, and admits of ocean navigation as far up the St. Lawrence as Montreal.   In spite of the American preoccupation of the field, the opening of the Welland canal took place in 1831, six years after the completion of the Erie, and became an important step towards the improvement of the St. Lawrence route.   Up to 1920 the Canadian Government has spent about $100,000,000 on this system and proposes to duplicate the expenditure in the course of a few years.   Meanwhile, American commercial interests are keenly alive to the menace of Canadian competition.   Add to this commercial issue the strategic importance of the outlet to the Great Lakes, foreseen by Wellington when he asserted, in connection with the War of 1812, that America would not be subdued, until the Great Lakes had been acquired and brought under the control of English navies.   Without the Erie Canal, the upbuilding of the rival Canadian route would have been greatly encouraged, and the absence of our American waterway would have enriched Canada commercially and strategically rather than the United Staes.

Probably without the Erie canal, transportation systems across Pennsylvania to the Great Lakes and the Ohio River would have built up that state and benefited the entire nation.

A third possibility that may have benefited the nation in its formative period is the Mississippi River and its tributaries.   There are two principal commercial outlets for the Mississippi Valley.   The Gulf of Mexico Route has been longer developing, but is increasingly recognized as a formidable competitor of the direct route to the Atlantic seaboard.   The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 gave the first decisive impulse to commerce to move across the country instead of down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.   In later years, the construction of the trunk great trunk railroads parallel to the Erie Canal strengthened a movement that had already become firmly established.   Had the Mississippi River formed the principal outlet of the rich interior of our country, the southern cities might have become great industrial centers and political affiliations might have been between the southern and midwestern states, thus changing the course of the Civil War.

Great Lakes Region

At the time of the agitation in behalf of the canal and through the early days of its operation the most rapidly developing section of the land comprised the states carved from the great Northwest Territory and these constituted precisely the section bordering the Great Lakes and so the most sensitive to the impetus afforded by the Erie canal. It is easy to see by a glance at table No. 1, in the appendix to this chapter, that these states were relatively insignificant in 1810, and for the most part in 1820, at the beginning of canal times; also that they have become foremost, with the exception of a very few, in the Union of today, with its fifty-two states and territories and its eighty millions of people. And not only in population have the shores of the Great Lakes attained distinguished rank in our prosperous land, but they have become, in the phraseology of the twelfth census, "the great manufacturing belt of the country," contributing more than one-half of the total value of the manufactured products of the entire United States. It is the unnumbered craft which ply busily upon these waters that make possible that manufacturing supremacy. The census of 1900 reports that "more than five times as many vessels" pass through the United States and Canadian canals at Sault Ste. Marie as through the Suez canal, and that the ton-mileage of its freight traffic is "equal to nearly 40 per cent of that of the entire railroad system of the United States." Therefore it has become the "greatest internal water-way in the world." 8 This sufficiently demonstrates the fact that, whereas there were probably in 1812 but three vessels navigating the lakes 9 and where there was thus early in the century such difficulty of inland communication as to render intimate relations and interchange of products impracticable, such condition has been long extinct; that the inland has been able to profit from its improved facilities for transportation, whereby its output has been rendered many times more marketable and its lands have brought far greater returns. Yet just how much of the stimulation is attributable to any one influence among the many which contribute to the development of a particular region, it is always impossible to say. Our judgment must be based on certain specific instances, which are assumed to be representative, although we cannot know with assurance that they are not abnormal or accidental; or else we may study the growth in its salient features and seek to determine from their uniqueness and correspondence, chronologically or otherwise, with the action of such forces, just the extent to which this influence has prevailed and regulated subsequent events. It has indeed been asserted by many, and notably by as high and supposedly as impartial a tribunal, or investigating committee, as the country could well furnish, that the thrift and activity of this great Northwest (now the Middle West) belt is the outcome of its facilities for through water transportation. At least the "Select Committee [of the United States Senate, appointed in 1872] on Transportation Routes to the Seaboard" – of which Mr. William Windom, representing in the Senate the interests of the extreme lake state of Minnesota, was chairman – reported that in its opinion "the railroad interests practically control the transport of grain from all that part of the states of Illinois and Indiana situated south of a latitudinal line 60 miles south of Lake Michigan," referring to competition of rail and water for shipments to the seaboard. 10 And the committee gives the water system credit for governing rates, above that parallel, even on that portion of the traffic which it does not directly handle. This view of the utility of the waterways is certainly no less applicable to the period which we desire to examine and from its authority and definition of statement is as forceful as it is suggestive. 11 Pursuing, however, an independent course of study, which may at least convey some intimation of the services of the canal, we find that table No. 2 emphasizes the extraordinary development of these border states during the early canal days and especially that of Michigan after the opening of the canal – the peninsula state of Michigan being perhaps the most restricted to that outlet, on account of its remoteness from the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. This, as has been stated, was the most rapidly developing section of .the country. Table No. 1, already cited, will show, on the basis of rank of the several states, when the most conspicuous strides in the population of each state took place, namely, in 1810 to 1820 for Ohio, 1820 to 1830 for Indiana, apparently in the last ‘twenties and in 1830 to 1840 for Illinois and from 1830 to 1840 for Michigan. It will thus appear that their greatest impulses to development occurred, except in the case of Ohio, simultaneously with the early effects of the canal. Yet in point of magnitude of participation in the business and benefits of the canal it is probable that Ohio led all the rest. MacGregor in his Progress of America, published in 1847 (Vol. II, p. 747), quotes a Mr. Scott of that state, as writing that "Ohio has great natural facilities for trade in her lake and river coasts; the former having become available only since the opening of the Erie canal, in 1826, 11a and that to little purpose before 1830." Table No. 3 verifies that fact. Again, that the effect of the canal was not lost on Ohio, but rather obscured by the contemporaneous emigration westward, is indicated by the exhibition of table No. 5, showing the unique growth of the new town of Cleveland, on the lake shore, during the decade 1830-40. Equally remarkable was the growth of Detroit, shown in table No. 6. The unparalleled stimulation of the new and the old alike, where peculiarly sensitive to its effects, thus bespeaks conclusively the influence of the canal. To appreciate the benefit derived by the inland states from the facilities afforded by the great waterway, it is necessary to reflect that, in the early decades of the century, no better thoroughfare than the incomplete National road existed for the transportation of goods between the northwestern states and the seaboard and that for a quarter century thereafter (1825 to 1851), or until the opening of the Erie railroad, the canal furnished the only practicable means for through communication, other than the batteau and the Conestoga wagon, or at best the stage-coach and Durham boat. 12 If any statement is necessary to demonstrate the large service of the canal to the Northwest and preeminently, perhaps, to Ohio and Michigan, it is but necessary to cite table No. 3, which shows the relative extent to which the several states used this waterway for transportation purposes, and again table No. 4, exhibiting the remarkable growth of the proportion of out-of-state products passed upon the canal, these products being in 1836 the merest fraction and in later years the predominant share of the total movements. That in itself is a tribute in the highest degree to the part borne by the waterway and the need which it supplied in the evolution of the West. The facts of history are always more graphic from the lips or pen of a contemporary. As touching the subject in hand we submit, therefore, the following statements from the early historian of the Mississippi valley. "Ohio," he says, "with the largest and most dense population of any of the western states, has nearly double the number of inhabitants, by the census of 1830 which she had by that of 1820. – During that interval, her gain by immigration has scarcely equaled her loss by emigration; and, of course, is simply that of natural increase. In the rapidity of this increase we believe that this state not only exceeds any other in the West, but in the world." 13 Of an adjoining state the same historian writes: "In consequence of the great change produced by the opening of the New York canal, and the canal connecting Lake Erie with Ontario, the north front of Indiana along Lake Michigan, which, a few years since, was regarded as a kind of terminating point of habitancy in the desert, has begun to be viewed as a maritime shore, and the most important front of the state." 14 To what extent the canal facilitated such an increase may be understood when it is remembered that "the universality and cheapness of steam boat and canal passage and transport, have caused, that more than half the whole number of emigrants . . . and nine-tenths of those that come from Europe and the northern states, . . . now arrive in the west by water"; and again that "perhaps more than half the northern immigrants arrive at present by way of the New York canal and Lake Erie." Why the immigrants prefer water transit is further explained by the same contemporaneous historian: "They thus escape," he says, "much of the expense, slowness, inconvenience and danger of the ancient cumbrous and tiresome journey in wagons. They no longer experience the former vexations of incessant altercations with landlords, mutual charges of dishonesty, discomfort from new modes of speech and reckoning money, from breaking down carriages and wearing out horses." 15 Most of us are somewhat familiar with the trials of travel by stage-coach in the olden time, if only through the vigorous Pickwickian pictures drawn by so many masters of English fiction. Yet it is probably difficult for us to picture adequately the extremity of discomfort and privation endured by late seventeenth or early eighteenth century travelers in what was then our frontier territory. And although the benefit derived from the canal through its packet lines is hardly to be compared with its service in connection with the transportation of freight and produce, yet the bare fact that it reduced the time required to make the trip between New York and Buffalo from six weeks to ten days 16 is sufficient to excite some comprehension of the magnitude of that benefit and the stimulus it afforded to the development of the West. But when we consider the benefits accruing to merchants, producers and consumers, through the cheapening of rates and the enlargement of the market, we undertake a subject of large proportions. The trials which beset the immigrant in journeying to the West were small in comparison with the difficulty of establishing himself, when once on the spot, of obtaining a livelihood and providing for his family some small measure of those comforts which all classes enjoyed in the East. The canal aided him in emigrating, but it encouraged him far more, when it enabled him to ship his grain and flour from Buffalo to New York markets for about twelve dollars, whereas before it had cost him a hundred dollars per ton; 17 and when, through the medium of that transporting agency, he was able to buy the merchandise and manufactured products of the eastern country at prices not greatly different from those which prevailed along the coast. The rapidity with which prices of local products rose on the completion of the Erie canal and allied systems, and how far their united influence penetrated, is evident from the subjoined table, showing prices in Cincinnati, invigorated by the extension of the market and the consequent increase of demand. If the western producer was able to double his price on flour and nearly triple that on corn, it meant that his profits were enhanced many times, and this at a point, too, from which navigation had always existed, - through to the Mississippi and the Gulf. TABLE OF PRICES AT CINCINNATI. 18 1826. 1835. 1853. 1860. Flour per bbl. $3.00 $6.00 $5.50 $5.60 Corn per bush. .12 .32 .37 .48 Hogs per cwt. 2.00 3.12 4.00 6.20 Lard per lb. .05 .08 .08 1/2 .11 The effect of an improvement in the transportation facilities of a new country is always felt directly in the rates of transportation and prices of commodities, but the ultimate result, of which that is merely a promise, consists in the consequent development of the region served. The influence of any great work of intercommunication on the prices of commodities and rates of shipment cannot fail to be interesting and suggestive and to identify that work as the responsible agent and benefactor. But the real measure of its accomplishments is rather in the extent to which it opened and developed the interior. Therefore we proceed to a study of population and the varied growth of the territory under the influence of the canal. As a subject for more detailed treatment, let us consider the situation in the State of Michigan during the period after the opening of the Erie canal in 1825. Turning again to table No. 2, it will be observed that this state occupies the first place among all the states of the Union in point of increase during each of the two decades from 1820 to 1840; that its percentage-increase in the second decade is more than double that in the first and exceeds the maximum percentage-increase found anywhere during the previous decades discussed. 19 From this circumstance and the known fact that the population had been increasing slowly in earlier years it would be inferred that the rapid rate of increase began about the middle of the decade 1820 to 1830 and was exceptionally large, as compared with that of other new and developing regions. Reference to table No. 6 also has impressed us with the astounding growth of Detroit, far greater during the period from 1830 to 1840 than at any other time. It serves to strengthen the conclusions already drawn and to verify also the following forcible statements from a reliable, local source in regard to the influx of population into this state and its metropolis during the period in question: "Fifteen thousand emigrants arrived in 1830. . . . The [Detroit] Free Press of May 19, 1831, said: ‘To say nothing of those who have arrived by land, and through Lake Erie by sail vessel, the following steamboats arrived here within the last week . . . [with passengers] amounting to more than 2,000, and nearly all in the prime of life.’ . . . Such was the tide of immigration during the entire season of navigation that both steam and sail vessels were crowded to their utmost capacity. On October 7, 1834, four steamboats brought nearly 900 passengers. In January, 1836, three steamboats – two first class and one second class – arrived each day, with an average of 260 passengers each way. On May 23, 1836, 700 passengers arrived, and during the month there were ninety steamboat arrivals, each boat loaded with passengers. The roads to the interior were literally thronged with wagons. A careful estimate made in June by a citizen showed that one wagon left the city every five minutes during the twelve hours of daylight. In 1837 the immigration was fully as large; there was an average of three steamboats a day, with from 200 to 300 passengers each, and on one occasion in the month of May, 2,400 passengers landed in a single day. The larger part of these immigrants were from New York, and the rest mostly from New England. It is probable that, in proportion to its population, Detroit, and in fact the entire State of Michigan, has a larger percentage of New York and New England people than any other western city or state." 20 Speaking of Detroit the same writer says: "No considerable number of Irish were here prior to 1833, but at that time numbers of them came. The Germans began coming in the spring of 1832"; and again he cites the statistics of nativity of the census of 1880 and asserts that, of those states contributing to the population, "New York heads the list with 7,722, Ohio sent 1,965, Pennsylvania 998, Massachusetts 922, and Illinois 568. Out of a total of 116,340 there were born in America 70,695." The same historian alludes to the "emigration fever" and then reprints an effusion, much circulated, as he says, in that day, "known to have been largely influential in promoting emigration," and containing the following lines, which, if they do little credit to the versification inspired by the achievement of our Clintons and our Wrights, yet echo the extensive spread of its influence: "Then there’s the State of New York, where some are very rich; Themselves and a few others have dug a mighty ditch, To render it more easy for us to find the way, And sail upon the waters to Michigania,--- Yea, yea, yea, to Michigania." 21 When we consider the isolated condition of this peninsula-state, jutting northward among the lakes and remote from the grand routes of inland travel, and at the same time the wonderful accessibility of its territory to navigation on these lakes and thence by the cheapest route which Nature had furnished or man could possibly contrive, and extending through to the seaboard, except for three hundred and fifty miles across the state of New York – apprehending these conditions, we are forced to conclude that the removal of this solitary obstacle to through traffic by water, accomplished in the opening of the Erie canal, accounts for no small proportion of the simultaneous renewal of growth which occurred in Michigan. The history of the epoch, in a single sentence, we quote from an encyclopedic sketch: "The completion of the Erie canal in 1825 opened a new route to Michigan; and population increased rapidly." 22 This is a simple statement of cause and effect, but it is for that very reason a striking epitome of the influence of the canal upon the northwestern country. ------------------------------ A GENERAL DISCUSSION OF THE EFFECT OF THE CANAL UPON NEW YORK STATE AND CITY. We pass now to a consideration of the influence of the canal from the more restricted point of view of the self-interest of the State of New York. As we survey this field, there appears another notable source of competition, which was possibly anticipated and averted by the construction of the Erie canal. The State of New York, indeed, possessed natural advantages superior to those of any other Atlantic state, as a route of communication from the inland district to the seaboard. New York is today the only state extending from the ocean through the country to Canada, touching the lakes, and tapping the great productive inland region of the Middle West. In colonial times there were four primary routes of travel across the Appalachian system in the North, following, each one of them, an ancient Indian trail. The early settlers might penetrate to the interior by way of the Cumberland Gap, or Tennessee valley, to the southward; or they might cross southern Pennsylvania to the Monongahela river and thence to the Ohio; following up the Hudson and Mohawk rivers it was possible to strike across from the head waters of the latter to the Allegheny; or finally there was open to them, after the strongly entrenched Indians of the Iroquois nation had been pacified, a fourth route, keeping west from the upper waters of the Mohawk, crossing the famous "Oneida" portage and thence on towards the lake at Fort Oswego, or away through the tribal lands of the Onondagas and Senecas and Cayugas to the Niagara river. The most southerly of these routes had figured prominently at first in the settlement of the Ohio valley. Braddock’s road and the Cumberland road, however, had been laid out across the mountains by way of the second route and had thus attracted later the principal intercourse. But, as an authoritative writer states, "of all the routes by which the Appalachian barrier could be crossed, the most favorable in the north was by way of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys to the lakes." 23 In addition to being the best natural route, with least height of land to be overcome, it had the advantage of a connection with a harbor and port unequalled for natural facilities throughout the whole extent of the coast, where Nature had, by glacial agencies, sunk the mouth of a broad and navigable channel to a remarkable depth. New York was thus in a real sense the natural key to the interior. There were, however, on foot in the last days of the eighteenth century projects much advocated, and emanating, in one case at least, from General Washington himself, which proposed to connect the head of Chesapeake or Delaware bay or the Potomac river with the Ohio and the lakes. 24 Nothing but the difficulty of overcoming the intervening high land deferred the construction of such a canal in that favored climate; but had the utilization of the advantages peculiar to New York been less prompt, it seems probable that the inducement offered would have been ultimately sufficient to effect its construction – much as the recent indifference of Liverpool in regard to her commercial interests induced the construction of the Manchester ship canal, and transferred to Manchester part of that monopoly which had been vested in Liverpool by Nature. Once built, a more southerly canal from the Ohio system to the seaboard might indeed have swept away our prospective commercial glory, the joint product of our unique opportunities and our energetic, far-sighted policy of administration. This possibility assumes some degree of practical importance when we but consider that "heroic efforts were made [by Pennsylvanians] after the construction of the Erie canal to hold or capture their share of the internal trade. Every effort was made to link Lake Erie with the Ohio system and then with Philadelphia. Indeed, a great debt which for years after weighed heavily on Pennsylvania was contracted in the attempt." 25 The Legislature was memorialized, public meetings were held and a "Society for Promoting Industrial Improvements" was formed. Railroads and canals were compared and discussed and in 1825 an address appeared, in which "it was said that in 1796 the aggregate exports of Philadelphia were forty percent more than those of New York; whereas now they are forty-five per cent less. The difference was to be ascribed to the facilities for transportation afforded by the canals of New York." 26 With such enthusiasm prevailing it seems not at all impossible that Pennsylvania, had it not been for the Erie canal, would have succeeded ultimately in overcoming natural difficulties and piercing the mountain barrier in season to secure for herself and her metropolis the commercial prestige which the canal in reality captured for New York State. In broaching the question of local benefits we have been led to a consideration of a phase of our subject more favorable for direct statistical treatment than that which has been already discussed, for, while the United States, had it been divested of the liberal benefits which it derived from all its internal waterways, would still undoubtedly have advanced to its conspicuous place among the nations of the earth, on the other hand, without the Erie canal, it is reasonably certain that New York State would not have risen by such gigantic strides from the secondary position, which it occupied in early times, to the attainment of that prominence among the states of the Union, from which it has never since been dislodged. To illustrate further this relative growth of our home state, we may refer to the statistics prepared for New York in table No. 21, et seq., and represented among the curves in the diagram of plate No. II, which will be discussed more at length in subsequent pages of the chapter. A glance at this table or diagram will suffice to convince the reader of the pronounced impetus to growth imparted in the period from 1814 to 1820, at the beginning of which period our State passed the one million mark in population. It may be assumed as a fact, therefore, that there existed some cause for acceleration of development at about this juncture – a cause which must have been, in the light of the history of the time, either a reaction from the War of 1812, acting from without the state, or else the construction of the Erie canal, which was the distinguishing domestic occurrence of the period. Now the far-reaching effects of the War of 1812 were national in their scope and would be expected to influence the several states alike, while the direct benefits of the Erie canal which was largely confined to New York and the Middle West. The figures of table No. 7 show that, compared with the other six seaboard states, the growth of New York in the period of 1820 to 1840 was unparalleled. Table No. 8 exhibits the progress of the thirteen original states, and illustrates the fact that the percentage which these states contained of the total population of the United States diminished from census to census after 1800 with the exceptions only of New York and Georgia. It may be objected that figures somewhat disguise the proper relationship between New York State and the original states, since, unlike some of them, New York possessed or acquired a large undeveloped territory in addition to her sea and river front, the growth of which portion would be more fittingly comparable with that of the newer states. This does not, indeed, affect the comparison of New York with such of the original thirteen as Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas. Moreover, it is apparent from the studies outlined by table No. 19, that the density of population of the western section of the state exceeded that of each of the northwestern states even as late as 1840, while in 1820 western New York was very much more densely populated than Ohio, the earliest settled state of the Northwest, thus indicating that in their development our western tracts were considerably in advance, chronologically, of Ohio and the entire northwestern group. As the normal rate of gain of a region rapidly decreases with its increasing density, the comparison between western New York and any of the northwestern states during this period might be presumed to prove very unfavorable to New York. Yet, actually, the western counties bordering on the canal (Division III in the table) increased 55 per cent from 1820 to 1830 with a density of population of 33 per square mile at the beginning of that period, while the State of Ohio increased but 61 percent with an initial density of only 14 per square mile. Notwithstanding its considerable density in 1820, New York State, as we have seen, nearly doubled its population in the twenty years ensuing. If compared with the principal example of a new and rapidly developing state in the East, namely, the State of Maine, it will be found that New York’s rapidity of increase for each decade is always somewhat and generally far superior. These and kindred studies thus indicate the relatively rapid growth of New York and only tend to confirm the conclusions which we have already drawn from previous investigations. Again, since the metropolis, the City of New York, bears so conspicuous a ratio to the state, its progress is intimately associated with the state’s progress; and as the great distributing point, fed by the canals, it is likewise peculiarly a subject for the exhibition of the fruitful results of canal activity. In order to show the importance of the metropolis to the State of New York at the present time, let us consider what would be left, were the state to be deprived of that city. In the first place we should have practically no seaport and, therefore, no exports nor imports nor coastwise trade, in all of which particulars we far surpass other states, and which constitute a source of immense wealth. We might portray New York under those conditions as a comparatively small, inland state, covering all area less than twenty per cent that of Texas, deprived of three and one-half billions of assessable property, out of a total of less than six billions, and of more than three million inhabitants, out of its total population of a little over seven millions. There is nothing imperial in this picture, except, to the mind of a cynic. The progress of the City of New York, therefore, has been of vital consequence to the state in proportion as that city is now its mainstay. Yet in 1820 the present bounds of "Greater" New York contained less than ten percent of the population of the state. In the early days there was not as much business conducted at our port as at other Atlantic ports. Table No. 9, while it exhibits the far greater increase of that city than of any of the other three great competitive seaports in the twenty-year period from 1820 to 1840, also reveals the fact that in the preceding double decade New York was not the most rapidly increasing of the four, while as late as 1820 it was surpassed in population by Philadelphia (accepting the present boundaries of Philadelphia, which are identical with those of the county of the same name), and did not become in reality the metropolis of America until after the canal had wielded its influence and contributed its quota. The fact is, as we have said, that our great commercial city had been, previous to that time, among the more backward of the colonial ports. There came, however, an improvement. The facilities of the harbor of the metropolis and of the great and navigable Hudson river began to induce trade. So New York increased in the last half decade of the eighteenth century and the first few years of the nineteenth to a more conspicuous rank. Nevertheless, from about that date its export trade wavered, fell and did not recover its former proportions until some twenty years afterwards, or about 1825. During this interval, as the accumulated evidence of population and commercial statistics attests, there seems to have been something of a critical period experienced, as if the prize of supremacy were being {original text has "beng"} held in abeyance. There was apparently a moderate retardation of growth and an awaiting of developments. Perhaps figures are misinterpreted or their bearing on the case exaggerated, but further details, to be presented later, certainly indicate that this unsettled condition existed. 27 Suffice it to say now that, corresponding with this period of stagnation, there was taking place, as every historian knows, a fundamental change in the character of our commerce. Table No. 11 gives an exhibit of the shipping per capita engaged in foreign trade for a succession of years and shows that a maximum was attained early in the century, which was followed by a decline, continuing until the present time. Figures from the same source, giving the proportion of American carriage in foreign trade for exports, show in 1826 practically ninety per cent, or more than in a long time previously, but more also than from that year to the present day. The carrying trade of the world, which had been almost a monopoly and the source of so much profit to American seamen, especially during the European wars, was rapidly passing from our grasp. It was then that many thrifty ports which it had nourished, such as those along the New England coast – Newburyport, Salem and Portsmouth – became largely decadent. It was a period of changes and of new developments; for, as the foreign trade diminished, the coastwise trade began to increase, and, more auspicious than all else, at this juncture the internal trade of the nation had its birth, came rapidly to the forefront and grew to be a most important element in the wealth, comfort and community of interests of the several states. Thus the particular advantages, which once made cities and seaports, shrank into relative insignificance. Conditions were reversed. It was as though Commerce had abandoned her old haunts and sought new ones and especially a site for a great metropolis, the requisites for that site being an ample harbor and a direct connection, by some sort of "Northwest Passage," with the interior. Thus the introduction of new ruling elements into the commercial problem, and especially the rise of the internal trade in conjunction with the opportune building of the Erie canal, made New York City the commercial capital of the nation. So great is the prominence of the change which we have thus depicted, that historians distinguish the year 1820 as the beginning of a new and glorious epoch in the annals of the City of New York. And they set down, as the great opening event, the building of the Erie canal and its early operation, accompanied by the increase of commerce, the influx of aliens and – not the least of them all – the spread of democracy, first manifested in the metropolis through the demand for the convention of 1822 and the sweeping extension of the suffrage. 28 If further corroboration of the commercial changes which we have outlined were necessary, the evidence is not lacking, even from sources least disposed to exaggerate the glory of New York and the beneficence of her institutions. There was one famous rival port situated somewhat similarly in the middle states, liberally endowed by Nature and possessing prospects no less illustrious than those of our metropolis – probably far more promising in the eyes of our forefathers, the colonists – and this city the one which, as we have already said, had a population at the beginning of canal times (present boundaries considered) exceeding that of our own seaboard city. Yet today the one port, New York, has a population of three and one-half millions and combined exports and imports valued at nearly a billion and a quarter of dollars; the other, Philadelphia, has little more than one-third that population and one-tenth the combined export and import trade. 29 The historian of the City of Philadelphia, writing in the light of more than half a century of subsequent developments, focuses all of that light in one emphatic statement which, being like a forced confession rather than a voluntary tribute, possesses more than ordinary significance. "Be the cause whatever it may," he says, "the fact stands out prominent that from the completion of the Erie Canal New York became what Philadelphia had previously been, – the commercial emporium of the United States." 30 Other writers confirm this view. This same historian further develops the subject as follows: "The decline of the foreign commerce of Philadelphia was made the subject of a series of letters in 1851 by Job R. Tyson to William Peter, Her Britannic Majesty’s Consul for Pennsylvania. In these letters the causes of that decline were examined and the means of reviving it discussed. Mr. Tyson reviewed the past, examined the present, and forecasted the future. The fact that New York had stepped in between Philadelphia and her foreign commerce and drawn the same away could not be denied, but the former position of pre-eminence might, in Mr. Tyson’s opinion, be recovered by the exhibition of more ‘pluck and energy,’ on the part of Philadelphia merchants. ‘The merchants of 1851,’ he said, ‘have only to echo the sentiments of one of the non-importation resolutions of 1765 as steadfastly as they were uttered and observed by their fathers, the merchants and traders of the city of Philadelphia do unanimously agree, and the work is done.’ It is not within the power of individual, corporate, municipal, or State resolution to command the circumstances that make up the commerce of any port. It is not upon every fine harbor or navigable river that the marts of commerce are to be found. There are innumerable elements which, combined, fix and determine whether commerce will grow and prosper, without regard to the unanimous resolutions of merchants, or any other part of the population. The Erie Canal poured into New York the vast productions of the Northwest, and thirty years ago one city was equal to their distribution. New York and not Philadelphia reaped the benefit of that trade. The revolutions which the last thirty years have made in the material wealth of the great Northwest, the West, the Southwest, and the South, no longer put it within the capacity of any one city on the seaboard to distribute the thousands of millions of dollars worth of products raised annually by the trans-Alleghany section of the country. Philadelphia has regained very much and will regain much more of her ancient commerce, as transportation is cheapened and the products of the country are delivered at her wharves at the same or less cost than at New York. The common reason given why the trade of the country seeks New York is because New York has more capital than any other American seaport. But money or capital is only a convenient medium of exchange and is attracted by the product which is the real value. Nor has it any more power to draw the product to it than the eagle has to draw the carcass. Money gathers at New York because the products are there, and the products go there because it is cheaper to carry them there than to Philadelphia. Transportation is king. Neither cotton, iron, coal or any other product is sovereign. The conditions that fix the cost of transportation to market fix the amount and value of the products and their place in the commerce of the country." 31 Obviously this phenomenon, the decline of Philadelphia and the rise of New York, was recognized in early years, but the cause seems to have been misconstrued and the historian well says: "It is not within the power of . . . resolution to command the circumstances that make up the commerce of any port. . . . Nor has it [money or capital] any more power to draw the product to it than the eagle has to draw the carcass." Again, "The Erie Canal poured into New York the vast productions of the Northwest. . . . Money gathers at New York because the products are there. . . . Transportation is king." This very comprehensive work, from which we have just quoted, exhibits the large foreign trade in Philadelphia in years previous to 1830, which exhibit concludes with the words, "Enough is shown, however, to indicate the great loss Philadelphia has sustained in her commercial interests." 32 By 1830 or earlier this foreign trade of the port of Philadelphia had practically disappeared. Meanwhile, with a terminus in New York, the first line of regular packets crossing the Atlantic between Europe and America had been established, and by 1838 the business had risen to proportions indicated in the following statement: ------------------------------ STATEMENT OF THE REGULAR PACKETS FROM NEW YORK TO FOREIGN PORTS IN 1838. 33 To Liverpool, 5 times in each month 20 packets To London, 3 times in each month 12 packets To Havre, 4 times in each month 15 packets To Liverpool and Belfast 4 packets To Greenock 3 packets To Carthagena, Havana and Vera Cruz 5 packets Total 59 packets By assurance of a return freight the transatlantic lines had been attracted from Philadelphia, and no doubt from other ports, to New York City and thus, as we have seen, the facilities for internal trade had come to govern very largely the entire commercial status. That the supremacy of New York in its facilities for communication with the interior was the nucleus of its supremacy in a far broader sense, may be gathered first from the story of the foreign trade, which we have just rehearsed, and again from the interesting history of the manufacturing industry in the metropolis. Upon the development of manufactures we shall touch in a later section of the chapter, but, as an instance of the remarkable correlation of business interests of diverse character, we cannot refrain from pursuing further the comparison of the two cities – the one on the Delaware, which, despairing of the retention of a commercial primacy, devoted herself to manufacturing industry with brilliant success for a time, and the other at the mouth of the Hudson, bent upon commercial prowess, yet not only becoming the mistress of the seas, but gradually, inadvertently almost, attaining the first rank in the land in the value of her manufactured products. In this study we have recourse again to a Philadelphia publication, a pamphlet entitled, Philadelphia as a Manufacturing City, a Report presented to the City Councils of Philadelphia by the Philadelphia Commercial Museum, and published in 1899, from which one of our tables already considered has been taken. We quote from this publication (p. 25): "It is within the memory even of the present generation that Philadelphia was the great manufacturing city of the New World. Every writer and speaker of the first rank so described the Quaker City to preceding generations. . . . On the other hand, New York City made small claim to manufacturing pre-eminence in other days. That city was the premier of foreign trade, a great distributing and financial center. It lacked cheap fuel, was poor in skilled labor, and even in the matter of unskilled labor ranked below many American cities of less pretension. But New York wooed and won the merchant marine of the world; and the blessings of low freights, the facility to handle the largest tonnage, soon began to draw to the city of New York such great manufacturing interests as worked on close margin and were forced to ship at the lowest possible cost." The same publication proceeds by a review of statistics to demonstrate the fact that New York has indisputably "moved to the front rank as a manufacturing city" and has, in 1898, three times as many industries, with total valuation of products nearly twice as great as Philadelphia. It is because of this chain of numberless benefits, which followed the years of hesitation and uncertainty just prior to 1820, that we are forced to give a large measure of credit to the Erie canal, whose influence secured, or at the very least preserved to New York her supremacy during a critical period of her history and laid the foundation for the structure which succeeding decades have built into the second city of the world. But, of all the rivals which New York State and its metropolis met upon the sea and had to subdue, none put forth more strenuous efforts to secure the mastery than New England, or more particularly the maritime State of Massachusetts. In table No. 12 we have in juxtaposition the figures for the value of exports in these two states, New York and Massachusetts, which may be regarded as principal competitors for the export trade of the nation. 34 While intervening figures show considerable fluctuations, those chosen appear to be fairly representative. It will be seen that in 1811 the two states were substantially on a par in this respect. New York then displayed a tendency to rise, which was curtailed by the war – a circumstance perhaps the outcome of her more marked suspension of business during the campaign and reflecting an accumulation of produce held in the country during war times until more favorable opportunity for exportation should arise. At all events, a steady decline from 1816 is shown by this table, No. 12, so that in 1821 Massachusetts still tenaciously rivaled New York in the value of her exportations. Had such a condition lasted until the extraordinary development of manufacturing, which swept over the New England states about a decade later, this commercial rivalry might still have continued to threaten the supremacy of the Empire State. As it was, upon the most rational basis of comparison, employed in table No. 19 and on plate No. V, Massachusetts, alone of all the states east and south of the old "Northwest Territory," surpassed New York in growth during the double decade from 1820 to 1840. However, the underlying forces at work – the disappearance of money scarcity and war prices and more than all else, internal improvements, of which the Erie canal was chief – brought about a revulsion of commercial conditions after 1821 and the decline in export values was followed by a general increase rendering New York speedily the first exporting state in the Union, with exports for the year 1841 valued at about three times those of Massachusetts. Although statistics of imports previous to 1821 are not available, table No. 13 exhibits the rapidly ascending valuations for subsequent years. From diagrams of plate No. I, plotted to represent the data of table No. 14, it will appear at once that not only values of exports but also property values suffered a setback prior to 1820, attained a minimum about the year 1822, and subsequently, as the table will show, increased – the exports with occasional fluctuations, the property values with scarcely another retardation up to the present day. The correspondence of these records is strengthened from the fact that the decline and rise in property valuation occurs somewhat tardily, as compared with the exports. Since commercial and financial depression are first manifested in the impairment of trade relations and felt last of all in the real estate market, this feature would imply a common causation in the two cases, and mere fluctuation could not be construed to explain the conditions. MacGregor, in his Progress of America, 35 avers that the Champlain and Erie canals, from the time of their opening, employed "an amount of inland navigation tonnage larger than that of all the foreign and domestic shipping, entering and departing from the City of New York." In line with this statement the exhibit of table No. 17 illustrates the fact that the value of shipments brought to tide-water on the New York canals was, by 1846, greater than the whole export trade of the state and more than one-half the combined trade of all the principal commercial states of the Union. It points first to the commencement and growth of the canal trade in the twenty years and then to the upbuilding of New York in respect to its export trade during the same twenty years, from a position of rivalry to a rank of complete supremacy among the states of the Atlantic seaboard. Table No. 15 is intended to emphasize the fact that during the period with which we are chiefly concerned the value of articles transported on the canals exceeded the imports or exports of the state. A comparison of this table with No. 17 will further establish the fact that the way-traffic – movements which mostly originated within the state, but did not reach tide-water – represented twice the value of the through traffic, or traffic in articles shipped to tide-water. New York had therefore an immense bulk of way traffic which benefited her almost exclusively. She had also in the earlier years the overwhelming share of the through traffic, originating within her borders and contributing to her upbuilding. Down to the year 1847 (see table No. 4) the majority of the through traffic arriving at tide-water still came from the interior of the state; and until 1874 (see table No. 10) a greater tonnage passed over the canals than upon either the New York Central or the Erie railroad, thus illustrating the services and importance of the canals. The State of New York, up to the year 1882, the time of abolishing tolls, had earned considerably more from the various canals than she had expended upon the entire system (see table among the statistics of Part Two of this history), and even to the close of the fiscal year 1902-3 (approximately the time of beginning the 1,000-ton Barge canal) had expended only $169,466,410 (without interest), as against receipts amounting to $144,234,120. The Erie canal, to the year of the abolition of tolls, paid for itself, maintained itself, supplied funds to numerous lateral canals, now abandoned, no one of which was self-supporting, paid a large sum annually to the support of the general State government through a period of about thirty years, and then presented the State with some millions of surplus from its revenues. Thus the State actually realized on its original investment, aside from the long train of benefits, which it derived from the construction of the Erie canal. There are some general considerations worthy of notice before proceeding to the more intricate study of the effects of the canal upon the economy of New York State. For example, a perusal of table No. 7 shows that the state’s population of 1820 had increased in two decades by more than seventy-five per cent; meanwhile (as tables Nos. 23 and 33 indicate) the numbers engaged in agriculture had increased even more, those engaged in manufacturing had nearly trebled and almost five times as many were employed in commercial pursuits in 1840 as in 1820. In the fifteen years from 1820 to 1835 the valuation of real property increased far more rapidly than the population, while the personal property nearly quadrupled in value during the same time, so that by 1835 the individual in New York State possessed an average property of the assessed value of two hundred and forty-three dollars and of market value doubtless considerably more – and all this, notwithstanding that there was for some time prior to 1821 an absolute and steady decline in property valuation, as already stated. 36 In 1820 the unnaturalized alien population was scarcely a factor in New York State. As a class it constituted only about one per cent of the total. The change in this respect during the fifteen years to 1835 is remarkable – greater than any other of which we treat. The increase during that time amounted to nearly 450 per cent and in 1835 there averaged nearly four of this class to every ninety-six citizens. The change thus brought about – a change marking the commencement of a tremendous social revolution – furnishes an attractive subject, which we reserve for further investigation. 37 The percentage of the total area of the state under cultivation increased a little faster than the population, so that, from less than one-fifth in 1821, almost a third of the entire land and water acreage was returned as improved land in 1835. 38 In 1810 there were but 66 newspapers published in New York State; in 1840 the number was 302. That is, from one to every 15,000 inhabitants, the proportion had risen in thirty years to one per 8,000 of the population. 39 The total productivity of New York in 1840 was 50 per cent greater than that of any other state. Probably in the valuation of its property, certainly in the amount of its import and its export trade, and in its output, severally of manufacturing, commercial and forest products, it surpassed all others. 40 From a secondary rank in 1810 it had risen and become pre-eminently the first State in the Union. From all this it would seem to be evident first, that, however much the War of 1812 and the spirit of the times had done for the State of New York from without, there were at work within the state other causes not possessed by sister states, differentiating its progress from theirs and contributing to elevate it to an exalted rank. In the light of these studies, too, the source to which we must naturally attribute such influences is the greatest work of the period, one which we know to be responsible for so much invigoration, – the Erie canal. ------------------------------ EFFECT ON NEW YORK STATE CONTINUED - STATISTICAL STUDY. 41 "Since such therefore are the advantages of water-carriage, it is natural that the first improvements of art and industry should be made where this conveniency opens the whole world for a market to the produce of every sort of labor, and that they should always be much later in extending themselves into the inland parts of the country." Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations. Introductory. To a certain extent in order to ascertain by a more specific and perhaps a more convincing research the occasion for such disproportionate growth and prosperity as we have depicted, and no less for the purpose of tracing the influence of the Erie canal in the diversity of its manifestations, an elaborate compilation has been made of the official statistics of the early period, which relate to the towns and counties in our home state and their progress. We may not hope that such a study will demonstrate with mathematical exactness. We may rest assured that it cannot exhaust the subject nor picture all the channels of that influence. Our problem resembles, on the contrary, that of the geographer who seeks to delineate the ocean bed. Were the measurement of every point of its topography essential, generations and even ages would not suffice. But clearly, he may derive a liberal store of information by fathoming here and there, and evidently, too, the knowledge he secures is more or less reliable and his range of interpretation broader or more contracted according to the frequency of his soundings. First, we have purposed, by separating the major portion of the state into four main divisions, to adduce a contrast between the sections most susceptible to the effects, for good or ill, of the construction of the Erie canal and those more remote in situation or otherwise presumably less affected by its inception and continuance. We have recognized in New York and Kings counties – the territory comprising our Division I – interests and a history quite distinctive and unlike that of the remainder of the state. The counties of Kings and New York represent the modern city of "Greater" New York, the metropolis, the only notable seaport, and containing at the present day about one-half the population and far more than one-half the assessed valuation of the entire state. Even in 1840 New York county, alone, was larger than any four other counties combined, and in its environment and progress was comparable with no other district or division of territory from the coast to the lakes. This distinction was really vital and extended to the alimentary channels, as it were. The sources of the city’s nourishment and upbuilding were wholly external. But for its daily draught on tributary districts and agricultural communities its manufactories must starve and its commerce disappear. Indeed, only to a limited extent a manufacturing city, its absorbing interest was as a mart for the interchange of the commodities and produce of the world. Generally speaking, its function was to serve. It existed only because of the surplus and needs of other communities. It was, and is, a great distributing center, and as such has been subject to peculiar laws of growth and opportunity for increase in density of population, forbidden to other localities. Not only was it non-agricultural and dependent, but in addition it has come to be widely known as cosmopolitan – a port whose prosperity, unlike that of the rest of the state, has been very largely and directly drawn from national and international sources. New York City responds punctually to each westward impulse of emigration and civilization. The supplies, the capital, the emigrants themselves pass through her portals and deposit their respective contributions in her coffers before proceeding to the interior. Her population in its disproportionate rapidity of increase, as we shall see later, displays this expansive feature of her composition. But in the earlier part of the last century the story was different. That uniqueness had not yet been acquired. Other cities were rival ports of entry, and the metropolis of the state was not the overwhelming majority of the state in wealth and business prominence. It is thus to avoid confusion of the different phases of the influences of those times as much as possible, and to set in relief the phenomenal growth of New York City that we have selected it for separate treatment as the first division of the state’s territory. A second and a third division, together comprise those counties bordering the Hudson river between Manhattan and the Mohawk, the counties touched by the Erie canal, and in addition Suffolk and Chautauqua. It might be expected that these would present, on account of proximity to improved facilities for navigation, decidedly the most conspicuous example of the benefits derived or the injury suffered. However, as that portion of this strip seaward from the head waters of the Mohawk had been in earlier times opened up and settled more or less extensively through the medium of existing facilities for navigation by way of the portage from Albany to Schenectady, the Oneida-Madison county line has been chosen as a boundary between Divisions II and III and we may regard the entire strip to the east, namely, Division II, as developed sufficiently to have attained a condition of normal growth before the canal era of which we treat. On the other hand we may reasonably look to see the most striking stimulation to settlement and industry exhibited in the third division, Madison to Chautauqua counties, inclusive; for these counties lay along the "frontier" district, as it was familiarly known in the war times of 1812-14, and away from through, navigable watercourses of importance. Thus they were virtually opened to through communication by the new waterway. It is no great exaggeration to say, therefore, that whatever they were in 1840, that the canal made them. Another class of counties presents itself to our consideration. We have designated it Division IV, and have included within it all the remaining inland counties to the south of the Erie canal, those counties now known as the "southern tier." This section is and has always been chiefly agricultural. We have not treated this division at the same length as the other three divisions, since the influence of the canal, acting overland, so to speak, or else reflected through mutual interests and common prosperity, is bound to be less striking and more difficult of identification. In order to probe even further the abundant influences engendered by the commercial stimulus of the period and to ascertain just how far away from the shores of the canal we may trace this effect with reasonable certainty, or how its intensity varies in passing from the margin (where it may be assumed a maximum) back inland, we have established two belts or zones throughout Divisions II and III, the first, or A belt, consisting of the townships actually bounding the canal, and the second, or B belt (geographically two belts on opposite sides of the waterways), of the remainder of the border counties. These two belts we have styled: in the East, Subdivisions II-A and II-B, respectively, and in the West, Subdivisions III-A and III-B, respectively. We have found this separation along the somewhat irregular, civil boundary-lines to be the only practicable means of studying the situation, and even in this we have been obliged to introduce some estimated figures in connection with minor details of the investigation, as, for example, in the statistics for towns which were erected or made over between 1820 and 1840 – the limiting dates of our principal investigations. In such cases, however, we have generally included the whole extent of the parent township, where we could thus avoid estimation of data, and have thus treated in Belt A some towns remote from the waterways, and in rare cases have omitted border towns from their proper subdivision. Likewise, in the several main divisions we have been obliged to consider the important changes of county boundaries, and frequently to compile our data independently, from the township figures given in the census reports. These are all available back to 1810, however, and thus scarcely an estimated figure is introduced in treating of the main divisions. But in 1810 the population of the state by townships is not available to us and we are compelled, therefore, to confine ourselves to the summary of that census, thus ignoring a number of civil alterations and rendering the comparisons between this year and subsequent years the least reliable of any – a feature which, however, concerns us only in our study of the population. In the range and scope of our investigations we have been limited only by the amount of information available and by the period of the initial and most distinctive influence of the canal. We have extended our most elaborate study (that of the population) back to 1810, when the canal was first seriously projected – in order to catch the rate of growth and the general conditions prevailing before its active intervention – and we have discussed that population in numerous ways, with the aid of the national decennial census and the state censuses of 1814, 1825 and 1835, thus covering the period through the year 1840, at which time the full initial effect of the stimulus had been felt. 42 The western division had passed the eastern in its journey along the path of progress; and, though the era of unchallenged canal supremacy was not over until about 1850, yet before that time the railroad and telegraph and manifold and diverse interests were to a greater or less degree collaborating to favor and upbuild the community. But the initial influence of the canal – to use a mechanical analogy – imparted a ceaseless motion, and the same force has been acting as a continuous acceleration from that day to this. Whence we have added data from the census of 1900. The increase for the sixty-year period intervening has then been resolved into an average increase for a five-year period, to compare with the other rates shown for five-year periods. In 1821 the first attempt was made in a New York State census to gather statistics other than those of population, and from this census, retained in manuscript in the State Library, we have been able to compile figures for the amount of improved land and for the number of manufactories of ten different classes, to compare with similar statistics in the State census of 1835. 43 From the United States census for 1820 we obtain the numbers of unnaturalized male aliens, and corresponding data are again found for 1835 in the State census of that year. From the 1820 census also come the numbers of those engaged in the three principal classes of gainful occupations, and these are compared with similar figures for the Federal census of 1840. The additional columns of our table, representing the property valuation in 1820, as compared with 1835, both real and personal, are abstracted from the special reports of the Comptroller of the State to the Legislature. Reflection on the subject will suggest that the results of such early enumerations must have been quite defective, and perhaps so ambiguous in classification as to prove nothing in any comparison to be drawn. The assertion is true to a limited extent. Too much reliance may not be placed on the intricacies of such a study, but with the exercise of much care the general observations are seldom vitiated, we believe, and especially where so extensive a range of interest is considered, the danger of ill-founded general conclusions is slight. There are several notable sources of uncertainty. For example, the figures for the number of persons engaged in commerce in 1840 are supplemented by the numbers of those engaged during that year in navigation of lakes, rivers, canals and also separately of the ocean, these classifications not being given in the census of 1820. Moreover, the instructions to marshals of the 1820 census do not enlighten us with respect to the exact definition of the term commerce as used in that census, while from internal evidence, deduced from details of comparison of the two years, we are reasonably certain that in many cases at least the persons engaged in navigation were included under the head of those engaged in commerce in the returns of 1820. Thus the combined figures for persons engaged in commerce, plus those engaged in navigation for 1840 appear to be comparable with the numbers returned in 1820 of persons engaged in commerce only. The increase, however, on the other basis is striking enough, and, as there is no absolutely conclusive evidence in existence, results of comparison on each basis have been given. 44 Again, some question exists as to whether the figures for unnaturalized aliens used, as obtained from the censuses of 1820 and 1840, are entirely parallel. There are, no doubt, some facilities for further study of the increase of the various sections of the state. There are Federal census returns, for instance, as early as 1810, of the value of manufactured articles. A recapitulation of these data is furnished in the twelfth census, but the details are not available and the returns make little pretension to sufficient accuracy and uniformity for purposes of comparison. There is facility for discussing more in detail the various classes of population recognized by the early census, of ascertaining the proportion at different ages, the ratio of male to female, et cetera, but their very slight bearing on the subject seems not to warrant painstaking inquiry. Thus we consider that we have examined the principal and most suggestive basis of comparison available in view of the meagerness of the census at so early a date as 1820. We venture the statement that, if further insight be desired, it will rather be found through increase in the number of divisions of territory than by any other expedient. We are convinced, moreover, that no greater refinement in classification of border lands along the waterways than by counties and townships can be pursued with any approach to a satisfactory accuracy. In order to study the data accumulated for each section of the state we have made numerous arithmetical deductions. We have throughout obtained the differences in absolute figures for each period representing the actual gain or loss. These have been reduced to percentages of the original figures (tables Nos. 27 and 33), then, in connection with the area, the density of population per square mile has been computed (table No. 28), together with its gains and losses (table No. 29). For the industrial statistics the data have been divided by the population; per capita figures, or oftener figures per one hundred of the population, have been obtained thereby (table No. 35); and losses and gains in this respect have been ascertained (table No. 34). Again, to adduce a significant comparison between the several divisions, each has been treated in its progress and absolute condition relative to the progress and absolute condition of the entire state, figures of which have been, largely for this purpose, compiled; that is, the equivalency of these data in terms of the corresponding data for the state has been found (tables Nos. 30-31 and 36-37). Also the subdivisions have been treated in some such manner with respect to each other or to the main divisions embracing them. In addition, occasional results have been deduced, such as in finding the percentage of the total area of the several divisions actually under cultivation (table No. 38), and the approximation to the average number of acres of improved land to each person engaged in agriculture (table No. 39) – this latter study involving a severe extrapolation on account of the dissimilarity of periods represented in the data used. In order to investigate and to present results pertinently, the densities of population have been plotted for each census year and curves drawn, which appear on plate No. II. Thus equipped with the necessary preliminary information for weighing the evidence, we proceed to the consideration of the data accumulated, and first to the study of the population. ------------------------------ Population. 45 Period Treated, 1810-1840-1900. It will be seen from table No. 32 that in 1810 about 10 per cent of the population was in "Greater" New York (Division I) and nearly one-half was in Division II, whence nearly 60 per cent ranged along the Hudson and Mohawk rivers to the Sound, and that there was contained about 16 per cent each, in Divisions III and IV – the whole territory treated comprising 90.4 per cent of the state, though only 34,000 out of 50,000 square miles, or 68 per cent, of its total area. In 1840, however, New York contained about 15 per cent. Division II now less than one-third of the total, while Divisions III and IV still contained about equal percent ages – namely, 21 per cent each – although the latter (Division IV) covered almost twice as much territory as the former. There was still nearly one-half the population concentrated along the Hudson and Mohawk rivers. The sections considered now contained 87 ½ per cent of the state’s population, showing that the remainder with 32 per cent of the area was yet a small factor in considering the increase of population, and further that the population of these northern counties, varying about uniformly with that of the state, is consistently eliminated from the discussion. The four divisions considered contain now (1900) 93.6 per cent of the total population of the state. It is apparent from the curves of plate No. II that generally much the least progressive portion of the period covered was at the start, 1810 to 1814, at which time the several sections appear to receive new inducement to growth. The entire state, also, quite uniformly increasing throughout the remainder of the period, is at this time notably invigorated. This circumstance may be accounted for in two principal ways, as we have observed on previous pages. First, the War of 1812, concluded by the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, had given the country at large a setback. The rate of increase was thus much enhanced immediately following the census of that year. The second reason consists in the internal forces. We have already shown from table No. 7 that all the states had prospered in the reaction from the War of 1812, yet the rate of increase of New York during the double decade 1820 to 1840 was by far the largest, thus indicating the operation of local rather than national forces to a large extent in its upbuilding, and of these local forces principally the internal improvements – chief among them the Erie canal, formally authorized in 1817, and finally completed in 1825. It will also be observed by reference to the curves that on the final opening of the canal in 1825 an acceleration, though much less pronounced than the first, is yet distinguishable in some instances. It may be wise to remark here that the percentage-increase normally decreases with increase in population, or density. Even if the population curve is straight – that is, the rate of increase uniform, no matter how steep – this condition is fulfilled. To represent a constant or augmented percentage-increase the population diagram must curve upwards. This means, therefore, that any continued ascending progression of the figures for periodic percentage-increase of a section – or, indeed, the constancy of this figure – implies a rate diagram curving upwards, or an anomalous growth. Proceeding to the consideration of the four divisions, we find that Division I, substantially New York City, differs in being a distributing point and on the seaboard, influenced thus by different conditions from the producing communities. It is noticeable that just prior to canal times (namely, in 1810-14) its population suffered a decrease of 1.4 per cent – due in part, no doubt, to the War of 1812. This is the only absolute decrease which appears in any of the sections throughout the period treated (that for Division II in the same period being only apparent and due to including in the 1810 figures for Montgomery and Oneida counties returns for the whole or parts of the present Hamilton and Oswego counties), and it is in strong contrast with the phenomenal increase throughout the remainder of the period, or following the impetus furnished by the canal. This division experienced an increase in density of population per square mile from 1810 to 1840 more than seventy times as great as the increase of the state at large. It passed, as we have already shown, the last of its rivals among the ports of the Atlantic coast during this period, increasing more rapidly relatively to the other cities after 1820 than it had done previously, and much faster than it had itself increased in earlier times. Plate No. I (upper diagram) illustrates the fact that from 1810 to 1820 New York City was gaining less rapidly than the state at large, from which time it has steadily risen from about 10 per cent to nearly 50 per cent (Richmond and Queens counties are not included in Division I which in 1900 equaled 44 per cent) of the whole state’s population. Regarding population as proportional to business and other growth, its incontestable primacy for the nineteenth century among the cities and marts of the New World was, it would appear, established and secured during this period, as nearly as it can be designated by census years. The foreign commerce of the entire country, together with the merchant marine, diminished greatly in relative magnitude after the War of 1812, but that of New York least of all the states. It thus seems unavoidable to conclude that in the acquisition of the internal trade – the key to coastwise and foreign trade at this period particularly – our metropolis captured the prize which was to become the foundation of her importance. She was henceforth the Gibraltar, controlling for one hundred years at least the resources of the upbuilding West. Possibly on account of some deficiency in the State census, or overestimation in the Federal census, the population of Division II fluctuates with some regularity, dropping in the middle of each decade. The population remains about stationary from 1810 to 1814. Its rate of increase is manifestly accelerated between 1814 and 1820, simultaneously with the beginnings of the canal; but obviously the draught of the westward emigration reacted upon it between 1820 and 1825, so that the resulting average rate of increase, adhered to with striking uniformity from 1825 to the present day, is somewhat less than that of the entire state, and accordingly the percentage which it contains of the total population of the state falls from 48 to 30 between 1810 and 1840, while every other division treated contains a greater percentage of the state’s population in 1840 than in 1810. Nevertheless, from 1820 to 1840 its population multiplied 1.38 times, thus indicating a more rapid percentage-increase than that of the prosperous State of New Jersey, shown in table No. 7. Evidently the forces of the day did not develop Division II as much as the remainder of the state. The explanation is found in the fact that the disproportionately rapid growth of the newer sections drew heavily upon the population of the older settlements along the Hudson and Mohawk rivers and thus counteracted the stimulating effects of the canal upon its shores. As these counties had long been open, to a greater or less extent, to navigation from the seaboard by way of the two rivers, the portage from Albany to Schenectady and the improvements of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company, the canal did not, as in the case of the western counties, so conspicuously facilitate their trade. As they were not directly benefited by the mere through commerce passing on the canal and did not contain terminal or distributing points to any considerable extent, it is apparent that they would not profit from the new waterway in the same manner as did New York City, to the east of them. Unquestionably the canal affected considerably the distribution of the population in local instances throughout this district, as instanced by the loss at Schenectady and the gains at Watervliet and Albany. Doubtless, too, its influence would be more apparent in the counties from the Hudson river west, if treated separately, as that section had borne the additional expense of the portage and the high tolls charged by the Navigation Company. Nevertheless, Division II as a whole remains a comparatively neutral zone, only normally affected by the influence of the canal, which had fostered such an abnormal growth to the eastward and to the westward. There is one further characteristic of the population curves for Division II (which will be later emphasized), namely, the slight increase of progressive rate at the conclusion of the period, coexistent with the retardation to Division III. Both of these features, the positive and the negative, are duplicated and thus are confirmed in the discussion of all the respective subdivisions, and possess, therefore, some augmented weight. We withhold this subject, however, for examination in connection with Division III. The border towns of this division cover slightly less than one-fourth of the total area. It is obvious that the population was well concentrated along these border towns from the beginning of the period, that is, from 1810, in confirmation of which it is only necessary to note that Subdivision II-B, having a density of only about one-half that of II-A in 1810, still continues about four-tenths in 1840. In the thirty years the population of the division had increased some 70 per cent, but even then had only reached about the density of the A belt of the division at the commencement of that period. These border towns, constituting the A belt, exhibit a growth comparatively uniform with the exception of the phenomenal leap at the time of the completion of the canal, or of turning into it the through traffic from the West – an acceleration which partially, but not entirely, relaxed in 1830, so that the growth of the subdivision continued to be somewhat more rapid than by the rate of increase, which obtained before the day of the canal. Had it not been for this acceleration operating after 1825, it is noteworthy that the ratio of densities of subdivisions would have continued 1:2 until the year 1840. The cause of the phenomenon is thus clearly responsible at least for the progress of these towns in so far as it exceeds the rate of progress of the townships back of them. Thus also it may be stated of the eastern border towns, that decidedly the most distinctive feature of their progress was this leap between 1825 and 1830, leaving its impress on the subsequent rate after it had itself expired. So sudden and striking a feature can be attributed to nothing, we surmise, but the opening of the canal in 1825, the benefit of which, it appears from an examination of table No. 25, fell to both the towns bordering the canal and those bordering the river. This is, in effect, a proof of the wide and beneficent influence of the canal, even upon the eastern counties. The fact that the phenomenon is not reflected in the remote towns, which we should suppose less sensitive to commercial stimulus, at once strengthens our proof and serves an index, pointing to that influence. In its magnitude this acceleration is not paralleled in any other section treated, for, while the same cause is operating with even more force in Subdivision III-A, yet the rate of growth of that section is already so great as not to admit of accentuation, even with the unusual transportation and other facilities offered. Its population, too, has been increasing rapidly for fully ten years, partly in anticipation of the canal, thus producing a phenomenon of premature effect, while the result upon the older and more conservative country is not distinguishable until after the influence has been operating for a definite length of time. The interior townships, containing 75 per cent of the area and nearly 60 per cent of the population, exhibit no marked fluctuations – though presenting a very uniform and slow growth – and apparently were not much affected by the canal over and above their share in the wide-spread benefits accruing to the state (plate No. IV, upper diagram). Their population, one would suspect from the curves shown, was agricultural and their lands not peculiarly fertile. They were more populous in 1810 than either belt of Division Ill, but as early as 1820 Division III had attained a like density. The wonder, perhaps, is that this unattractive rear belt, with the depopulating tendency of the westward movement, was not actually diminished, rather than slowly yet steadily increased. Throughout the period discussed, we may state, there existed a much greater difference between the A and B belts in the eastern than in the western division – the A belt being more populous east than west and the B belt more thickly peopled after 1820 west than east. We may add also, to avoid being misconstrued, that the classification adopted in this chapter could not be expected to distinguish the full local variations of the distribution in these counties, as affected by the canal. Such phenomena, for example, as the changes brought about by the transfer of terminal and other business from Schenectady to West Troy (Watervliet) and Albany, and from Lewiston and Black Rock to Lockport and Buffalo, do not appear, since a single subdivision may include the shifting population both before and after its migration. (See, in this connection, the latter part of foot-note No. 12.) Division III represents a territory very little developed until canal days, its initial density of population for the period 1810 to 1840 being not greatly in excess of one-half that of Division II, last discussed; but while Division II increased invariably less in density of population than the state as a whole, Division III, up to 1835, far surpassed the state in its periodic progress. From 1820 to 1835 the population per square mile increased about uniformly, and on an average by 1 ¾ persons yearly. Although it increased by a less percentage than New York City (represented by Division I) for the entire period, yet for all but the concluding five years, or during the quarter century from 1810 to 1835, its population trebled; that is, there were 60 instead of 20 inhabitants to every square mile in 1835, as compared with 1810, while the population of the metropolis increased only in the ratio of 2.9 to 1. Eliminating the unavoidable discrepancy in this division in the 1810 figures, that slight difference might perhaps disappear, but the comparison still emphasizes the abundant and unexampled prosperity and growth of the district under consideration throughout the range of its 7,700 square miles. For 25 years of the 30-year period which we discussed, the western border counties, comprising from one-sixth to one-seventh of the area of the state, outstripped all the other sections in point of relative growth. There is a slight acceleration noticeable at the time of the final opening of the canal, but, as subsequent study reveals, this is confined to the rear towns and appears to be of little significance. The actual and final opening of the canal was not like the infusion of a sudden stimulant. Many such effects were experienced, but the long, wide-spread agitation, and the eight years of construction, during which "Clinton’s big ditch" crept steadily through the western frontier, followed by the advance guard of commerce and industry, served to distribute its stimulating effect through the period before and after. In its largest signification it was a subtle, economic force, wherein both cause and effect were interwoven. The canal was not indispensable to the advance of civilization. Without the opportune moment no canal or work of improvement could have produced the immigration, industry and prosperity actually induced. Yet without the canal the westward movement would have been much hampered, perhaps delayed, and unquestionably it would have left New York in its onward passage less rich and fruitful than the Empire State of 1840 and 1850, to which history, as written on the printed page, and in every busy town and productive plain from Suffolk to Chautauqua, today bears witness. Natural resources are essential to the successful application of artificial, auxiliary expedients, but had man trusted to unaided Nature, his period of savagery would not yet be over. It is of interest to note that from the date of the passage of the canal construction law up to the census of 1835 the gain of Division III is practically uniform; and that, while previous to this early date it partakes largely of the typical downward trend, it is again slightly retarded during the last five years, namely, from 1835 to 1840. For the first time since the beginning of the period its population increased relatively less than that of the entire state, and as Division II exhibits a simultaneous acceleration, the anomaly is the more conspicuous. It is difficult to say positively to what this feature should be ascribed, especially in the absence of connecting data prepared on the same basis; and it is perhaps idle for us to speculate or to lay stress upon a feature not very pronounced, where a continuation of the curves might tend to vitiate our conclusion. The retardation, however, from 1830 to 1840 is undeniable, as it is further more reflected in both Belts A and B. We shall recite several facts, therefore, which seem to us to have an obvious bearing on the case. First, we may attribute the phenomenon, in a measure, to the continuous march of civilization westward. The region built up in middle New York State at the expense of the seaboard was now in turn contributing its quota to the states which had sprung from the great Northwest Territory. In the early days of the collector’s office in Buffalo clearances from out of the state for the Erie canal were insignificant when compared with the great number of internal trade interests subserved (see table No. 4, already cited). By 1836, 54,000 tons of out-of-state shipments were reported as arriving at tide-water by way of the Erie canal, but in 1841 this amount had more than quadrupled and from about one-seventh it had reached the significant fraction of two-thirds the volume of local New York State traffic arriving at the same point by the same channel, and this volume of internal traffic had itself dropped slightly in the interval. The ratio of foreign to domestic commerce continued to mount, although in no subsequent period of equal duration did it experience a like percentage of increase. The significant fact is, however, that where the West sent back to us its tens of thousands of produce, it drew from us its thousands of wealth and population, of which these were the fruit. Still other facts suggest an explanation of the diminishing increment of gain through the western district. It may have been the outgrowth, for instance, of the business depression occurring about 1837, which would naturally reduce the amount of capital disposed to venture into a new district. Such a district would be indeed more sensitive than the conservative and opulent East to a panic and its consequences. Again, it will be observed by reference to the diagram that these counties of Division III from their commonplace position at the start (their density being practically the average for the state in 1810 to 1814) attain a density of population equal to the density of Division II at about the time of the completion of the canal; that they continue uninterruptedly in their upward course until 1.13 times more dense in 1835 than Division II, and that in 1840, in spite of the retardation and upward tendency in Division II, they are still 1.1 times as thickly populated as the older and more easterly counties. It might thus be readily conjectured that this section had, at the close of the period under consideration, reached a state of normal development, as compared with the seaboard district, and was settling into the beaten path of progress, and suffering, as is usual, somewhat of a reaction from the extreme rapidity of its advance; that, in short, there was now less potent reason for the extravagant disproportion between the prosperity of the western and eastern portions of the state, although the larger extent of undeveloped and productive country lying back from the canal and tributary to the western border counties, and their greater proportion of commercial population and interests, might still be expected to afford the western section somewhat more opportunity for further development than the eastern. However that may be, the average rate of increase for Division III from 1840 to 1900 falsifies the argument that this division had reached a very materially inflated state of development and was, from any cause whatever, about to revert and settle into a growth parallel to that of the older and less progressive regions. Its average increase from 1840 to 1900 is not only greater than from 1835 to 1840, but is scarcely less than its rapid rate previous to that date and greater than the rate of increase of the less dense region, Division II, during the same sixty-year period. Since we must thus acknowledge both a slight decline and a subsequent rise, and have been able readily to assign reasons for the former, it behooves us only to explain the second of these reciprocal phenomena, and the solution, as it appears, is not far to seek. This solution consists first, in the temporary action and timely cessation of the causes to which we have ascribed the previous decline – the panic, the excessive draught of the West and the over-exploitation of its resources. Secondly, it is not reasonable to question but that a powerful influence, restraining this tendency of decline and innoculating with new vigor, was the second great stride in the development of transportation systems, namely, the introduction of railroads, in conjunction with the enlargement of the waterways, which the railroads were at first designed to supplement and reinforce. To recapitulate then, the data obtained indicate that Division III, taking a new start about the time of the actual authorization of the canal, increased with unequaled rapidity and marked uniformity, until by the year 1835, having become even more populous than the long-settled and well-established easterly section, having met the competition of regions further west and being exposed to the prevailing business depression of 1837, it faltered slightly, but soon resumed its previous rate of progress through its wonderful vitality – the outcome of its rich tributary area and those facilities for transportation, without which it must have continued a sparsely-settled farming country, namely, the canal and later the railroads, which the canal attracted thither and held to the best service of the community. The separation from Division III of the border townships, comprising about one-third of the total area, offers opportunity for various significant comparisons. It is to be observed that many towns bordering on the lakes and others on the lateral canals have not been included in this class, and yet the effects felt throughout this section are so striking that minor omissions do not impair the suggestiveness of the data. From tables and curves illustrating them it will be seen that the figures for townships, both in Divisions II and III, since the detailed 1810 census was not available, fail to exhibit the acceleration in the rate of increase imparted about 1815. The data for Subdivision III-A do, however, in their main features correspond closely with those of Division III, indicating in general a very rapid and uniform rate of increase from about 1815 to the noticeable decline in the rate towards the end of the period. In certain respects, now to be investigated, however, the data for the division and the A belt differ. At the beginning of the period 1814 to 1840 the density of population of the A belt was about eight-tenths that of the B belt. By the date of the passage of the canal law the former had presumably almost risen to the same magnitude as the latter. At the end of the period, in 1840, the A belt had become about 1 ¾ times as densely populated as the B belt, its final density being more than five times its initial density, so that its rate of increase was nearly twice that of the corresponding B belt. It thus appears that the inherent relations existing between the two zones of Division III were very different from those discovered in our treatment of Division II. In the latter case the relative standing of the two classes was well established before canal days and changed but little throughout. On the contrary, in the case of Division III, those regions back from the canal had actually been more thickly settled at the start, but evidently, in part at least through the influence of the canal, the population became concentrated more and more along its banks (see plate No. III). We pass next to the consideration of Division IV. This is the last class of counties treated and comprises all those south and west of the border counties (Divisions II and III) and to quite an extent corresponds, as we have said, with the section known today as the southern tier of counties. In area it covers more than one-fourth of the state, is somewhat larger than Division II and approaches twice the size of Division III. In situation it lies off the natural and earliest improved routes of communication, the larger lakes, the rivers and the through canals. From the smallest density of population encountered in the whole range of the classification adopted, namely, about six-tenths of that for the state at large and for Division III, these counties attained a density nearly 3 ½ times as great at the close of the period. Thus, while their final density scarcely exceeded ¾ that of the average for the state and was in a less ratio with respect to the other divisions treated, yet they had experienced a percentage-increase throughout the entire period slightly greater than that of the marvelously advancing canal counties of the western section. They had maintained and increased their slight superiority of rank above that of Division III on the basis of population relative to the whole state, so that they comprised 21.9 per cent in 1840, while Division III comprised 20.6 at the same date, the two having risen from 15.9 and 15.7 respectively. This fact does not detract from the anomaly of the growth of Division III, however. The density of Division III continues about twice that of Division IV. Considering relative densities, a far greater percentage-increase would thus be normal for Division IV than for Division III, and Table No. 19 and plate No. V will properly illustrate the comparative growth on a fair basis. Yet from this same table, which exhibits the superiority of Division III, it will be seen that Division IV makes a much better showing than Division II, its percentage of gain from 1820 to 1840 being twice that of the latter. It is, of course, impossible to state to what extent the canal was responsible for the upbuilding of the non-contiguous counties. A glance at the curves depicting these data will, however, prove instructive. The curve of increase of density parallels that of the state for some years. It stands, however, alone among all the divisions, in that no retarding effect has apparently been felt between 1810 and 1814, a constant rate of increase being observable from the start to 1830. This may be due to the minimum susceptibility of the inland counties to the drain and perturbations of warfare. On the other hand, the absence of an acceleration, corresponding with that of the remaining divisions, may in part be regarded as a witness to the lesser effect of internal improvements on these remote counties, and to that extent it is a confession of the extraordinary beneficence of the canal and other allied influences upon those divisions which do exhibit so marked an acceleration. The effect on, the counties bordering the lateral canals has been treated separately, moreover (in table No. 20), and their density may be seen to have increased very uniformly, and from a much smaller initial density than the whole division, by a much greater rate of increase. Their more westerly location in general is, no doubt, responsible for this phenomenon, as the lateral canals themselves were not constructed until about the end of the period. We have already called attention to the fact that the rate of increase of Division IV was somewhat diminished in 1830. Again, the diagram will illustrate the fact that it dropped by about an equal amount in 1835 and similarly in 1840, until during the period 1840 to 1845 it had attained about the average rate of the period 1840 to 1900, or in other words, settled conditions at length prevailed. Thus, both Divisions III and IV resemble one another in the retardation at the close of the period. They are widely diverse in one particular, however – the prompt recovery in the one case and not in the other – which is worthy of distinct and careful consideration. It requires no proof to assert that the canal, with its inducements to navigation and thus to the manufacturing interests, attracted such interests to its immediate shores and fostered them, on account of their ability to undergo congestion, more largely than the agricultural vocations. It is true, as we shall soon demonstrate, that agriculture experienced a liberal growth where subjected to canal influence, while the railroad seemed to discriminate in favor of the manufacturer and his high-priced products and against the farmer and the bulky produce of the soil. But it is also true that the canal had its largest share of direct influence in the State of New York in building up the infant industries of commerce and manufacturing. Let us ask what would have been the condition of New York State today if it had been obliged to depend upon agriculture as the principal pursuit of its inhabitants and chief source of its wealth, eliminating from immediate consideration, so far as possible, competition, which has entered our home market from the West. We need only examine the statistics of population as roughly proportional to the progress of a people to answer the query propounded. The year 1840 is the extent of the period which has been treated in detail. The research has been carried to 1845 in the single instance of Division IV to study the effect of lateral canals. However, data for the year 1900 have been compiled and, as already explained, the average rate of increase for the 60 years has been ascertained and the curves of density continued five years beyond 1840 to illustrate this rate for comparison with previous rates. Proceeding with this comparison, we observe the wide difference which exists in the rate of increase after 1840 for the several other divisions and that for Division IV up to a moderate density. Until perhaps 1830 or 1835 and an attainment of a density of 30 or 35 per square mile, the growth of this inland section was not so materially different from that of districts given over to commerce and manufacturing, and which were developing under normal conditions. However, having attained its critical density, there remains for it nothing but a slow and painful struggle with gathering forces of contention. Its improved lands could not stand the natural increase of population, not to say invite an influx, and as a result there was a continual thinning of the youth, which was scattered among scenes more promising, or was attracted to urban life. This is true of agricultural regions generally and more especially so in a partially developed, resourceful country, such as our own. Among the older nations the scarcity of facilities for expansion sooner stimulates the inventive genius to utilize to better advantage the limited area available. Even there it may be set down as an economic principle that the commercial and manufacturing industries, admitting of greater concentration, will develop what may be termed a crucial density of population at a much greater absolute figure than the agricultural community. In the latter each new inhabitant who separates unto himself a few acres of land renders the per capita return – other things being equal – just so much smaller. The income per acre may thus be said – expressing relations in mathematical terms – to vary inversely as the density, while, as the single example of New York (Division I) demonstrates, the increasing population of the manufacturing or commercial city tends to provoke still further gain through the better facilities afforded such industry by concentration of capital and division of labor. Again, such a community increases, so to speak, according to some power of the density, or in a geometrical progression. The agricultural district, in short, and the manufacturing or commercial district increase on a somewhat similar basis until the attainment of a certain density, varying in amount with conditions, beyond which point of saturation, shall we say, the agricultural section suffers a retardation and its growth is very slow or merely nominal – it can stand no more – while the sister community of different organization proceeds to the very acme of its existence. Had the great manufacturing belt along the course of the Erie canal grown up, nourished only by its native fertility of soil, even though the same facile transportation and the same ready market were provided – had this world-famous industrial section, the glory of the "up state", been consecrated and devoted to plow and scythe in preference to loom and foundry, then, we answer, New York might well have gained like the inland tier during the 60 years anterior to 1900 scarcely more than a single person per square mile on the average, instead of eight persons per square mile, as she actually did during that period. Then had Syracuse and Rochester and Buffalo, yes, and Albany and Utica stood today, thrifty market-villages. If the canal had prospered only the farm lands and failed to lend the first and shaping impulse to the upbuilding of the centers of industry, if on the site of the Salt City and the Flour City it had instead nourished farms, however productive, and orchards, though never so flourishing, could our New York have become the Empire State, to hold for so long a supremacy among the sister states, to breathe the spirit of industry and commerce in a measure tantamount to the wildest dreams of her far-sighted pioneers? In order to present, in compact and terse form, some of the most distinctive observations to which our study of local population in the period under consideration has led us, plate No. III has been prepared. To reduce the data already obtained to the desired terms, the lengths of the several divisions and subdivisions were first ascertained to be roughly as follows: Subdivision II-A, 270 miles; Subdivision II-B, 310 miles; Subdivisions III-A and III-B, 232 miles; and Division IV, 225 miles. >From these figures and areas given in the tables the average widths of the several belts were approximately computed. Of the A and B belts one-half of each was assumed to lie south of the canal. If the average densities of population for any year, already determined for the several sections, were assumed to prevail at the middle of these strips to the southward of the canal, and in addition if Division IV were regarded as a third strip with a known density midway of its width, then a good idea could be had of the variation of the population in crossing the state from the Pennsylvania line to the canal. This treatment, pursued for both eastern and western divisions and for one census before and one after the construction of the canal, results in the diagram of plate No. III. That diagram shows the extent to which the direct local influence of the waterway extended, at least on our basis. Exactly how many miles from its shores this might be, is a matter of judgment in the interpretation of the curves. Apparently it is noticeable for ten miles or so in the East and possibly fifteen in the West. The diagram also exhibits the transformation which overtook the immediate margin of the canal in the West, especially as compared with the settled conditions in the East prevailing both before and after the construction days. The diagram only summarizes and verifies data heretofore discussed and presents them so forcibly as to furnish a fitting conclusion to our study of the effect of the artificial waterway on the population of the state. We proceed now to a discussion of the other statistics compiled, in which we omit Division IV for the sake of brevity, considering only the first three divisions. ------------------------------ Unnaturalized Male Aliens. 46 Period Treated – 1820 to 1835. The data of the alien population are of extraordinary interest because the State of New York more than trebled its percentage of aliens between 1820 and 1835. The change of condition is thus more marked in this than in any other respect of which we treat and the question of distribution of the new class of population assumes commanding proportions. In nearly all respects, as is to be expected, Division I, New York City, leads the several sections in growth, that is, in absolute increase of per capita figures, so far as the present statistical résumé indicates. Exceptions occur, but principally in the case of agricultural statistics. When, however, gains are considered in percentages of the original figures, the order of standing is materially different and is often reversed. We have already remarked and cannot too strongly insist that neither system of treatment is wholly fair as a basis of comparison. Absolute increase of per capita figures may be very slight, comparatively, in the small district which has really doubled or quadrupled its interests. On the other hand, if mere percentage figures, based on original data, are adopted, the installation of a single relatively large industry in a region hitherto undeveloped in that branch may seem to indicate that this whole region has developed in a phenomenal manner, and would be unfair to the district given extensively to a like industry, yet whose periodic gain can be but a small percentage of its vast interests. This feature would be apparent in a comparison of New York, as Division I, with the several other divisions in relation to their alien statistics. In actual increase of aliens per 100 of the population Division I ranks first, being from 1 ½ to 5 times greater than the other divisions and subdivisions; but, on the basis of percentage-increase over the initial figures, Division I is eclipsed by all the remaining divisions (though not by Subdivision II-A), the percentage-gain in numbers being from 6 to 7 times as great for Subdivision III-A as for Division I. That from 4 per cent of its population, the aliens increased to more than 10 per cent in the 15 years from 1820 to 1836 indicates, however, that the city had, during this period, taken a long stride towards that cosmopolitan character which it now possesses. Even to the present time the percentage of alien population in the entire state has risen to little more than the figures for the percentage in New York City in 1840. 47 The metropolis was thus becoming a center for the alien population not only of this state but of all America, and the reason for this is not far to seek. We have presented evidence to show that the commercial prestige, both domestic and foreign, passed at the time of building the Erie canal from Philadelphia to New York, that the superior inland communications of the latter supplied return cargoes for the transatlantic trade and attracted thereby the European lines. With the foreign vessels transferred to New York came also the foreign immigrants as a matter of course, and for the further good and sufficient reason that the metropolis, as we have said already, was the "Gateway to the Interior" – that rich interior which with its surfeit of resources was the ultimate objective of a large proportion of the new comers. If these immigrants yearned for the crowded conditions of their home countries, they were best contented to remain in New York. If they sought communication with kinsmen or clients who had gone inland they established themselves in New York. If, going inland themselves, they still desired to maintain ready connection with foreign shores, New York City was the principal intermediary between them and the great terminals of Europe. In any case the metropolis became their rendezvous and profited accordingly. Thus, while in contrast Philadelphia is today the distinctively American city of the East, containing the largest percentage of native-born inhabitants, New York, shorn of its foreign population, would sink, startling as the fact may seem, almost to a position of mediocrity. In proof whereof, compare the native population of the two great cities from the 1890 census and it will be found that on this basis the New York of this recent day is scarcely twelve per cent larger than Philadelphia. 48 So many nations have from the first participated in the upbuilding of our metropolis that it has always savored of racial incongruities, but the foundation of its real cosmopolitanism may be traced, thus, back to the acquisition of the foreign trade in the early years of the last century. Referring to the curves of plate No. IV, it will be seen that in both Divisions II and III the percentage of unnaturalized alien population in 1820 was virtually insignificant, less than one per cent in each case, and that in all the subdivisions this percentage diminished as the distance from the coast increased, presumably owing to the fact that the immigrants lingered, at least until naturalized, in more thickly settled portions and likewise those nearest to the point of disembarkation, while it was the natives, thoroughly schooled in the peculiarities of the land, the hardships of the soil and, perchance, the treachery of the aborigines, who ventured to a greater extent on to the frontier settlements. This distribution might perhaps be accounted for in part on the less plausible ground that, if there were foreign traders, they would easily escape enumeration as transients or from ignorance of their whereabouts. The extensive acquaintance of western New York developed by the military operations of 1812-14 doubtless also conduced to native occupation rather more than alien. However that may be, it is significant that only fifteen years later, in 1835, the ranks of Divisions II and III in this respect are seen to be reversed. The growth in numbers of aliens had kept pace with the increase of population in Division II, but it had also more than kept up in the western section with the wonderful increase of the canal counties. The glitter of prosperity and fascination of the opening of a new and rich country, with its unexploited opportunities, attracted them inland. Still, as table No. 16 will indicate, the inhabitants of the state were in 1855, 64 per cent of them, born in New York, and 73 per cent were of American birth. The fact that the eastern part of New York supplied a large proportion of those who settled the western lands, first of our own and then of other states, is, by such figures, reiterated authoritatively. Of the other Americans contributing to our upbuilding, the sturdy New Englanders to the east of us, in conformity to the western movement of population, constituted the largest part. The local history of the middle of the state abundantly testifies that, "for thirty-five years after the Revolution," to use the language of a well-known writer, "the great immigration was from New England." 49 Our countrymen have been our advance guards in the progress of settlement over the middle and into the western states, while the greater proportion of the European influx has followed after the example was once set and the way made easy. It was when our extraordinary prosperity became well known and the resources of the land were rumored far and wide, that the aliens began to flock to our shores; and the earliest years of the canal mark the point of turning as nearly as any brief period can mark so vast a movement in the evolution of history. Not only did the canal induce activity of business and furnish opportunity for obtaining a fresh start in life and thus operate to attract the alien population, but, from the construction days on, it supplied immediate occupation for an army of laborers, in whose ranks the humble emigrant from foreign shores found employment suited to his capacity and rich in its returns as compared with that he had lately forsaken. Little by little the day was drawing near when he should became a chief reliance of the American public in its projection of great public works. To how small an extent this condition prevailed when the canal work began, however, may be inferred from the following sentence, taken from the Canal Commissioners’ Report of January, 1819, the year in which the first section of the canal was opened: 50 "A very few of the contractors are foreigners who have recently arrived in this country; but far the greater part of them are native farmers, mechanics, merchants and professional men, residing in the vicinity of the line; and three-fourths of all the laborers were born among us." Obviously, when foreigners constituted so small a proportion of the laboring class of the lowest order, their percentage of the whole population must be almost insignificant, as indeed our study has already indicated. Reverting to that study, we find that figures for Subdivision A reveal something of a paradox. The relations of that subdivision in 1835 for the eastern and western parts of the state are the reverse of those established for 1820, and for the divisions at large in 1835. Proceeding from the coast along this belt, the percentage of unnaturalized alien population somewhat diminishes throughout, as in 1820. This signifies that the alien growth has been, relative to the increase of the total population, much greater in the border towns of Division II than in the rear towns, and in fact the percentage of alien population of the rear towns has fallen in the fifteen-year period from six-tenths to three-tenths that of the corresponding A belt. In the B belt of the western division during the same time the percentage of alien population has also dropped from once to five-tenths that of the A belt, thus indicating a similarity of relative development for eastern and western sections in this particular. Yet, when it is observed that the two western belts started on the same basis, each having, in 1820, three-tenths per cent of alien population, it will be seen that there is implied a much more favorable record for the B belt in the West, since it increased as rapidly with respect to the A belt as does the B belt with respect to the A belt in the East. Indeed, it is but necessary to put the comparison in another way in order to make that statement apparent, for we observe that the rear towns in the East in 1835 contained only one-third as many aliens per 100 of the population as did the border towns, while in the West the rear towns contained over one-half as large a percentage as the corresponding border towns. This signifies first, that the A belt seems to be more attractive to the alien population in the East, and the inland, or B belt to the immigrants in the West; and secondly, it implies that the anomaly of an increasing population of aliens in 1835, as one recedes from the coast towards the lakes, a feature which we have discussed at length, was largely accomplished through the attractiveness of the B belt of the West to alien immigration (plate No. IV). The occasion for these conditions merits inquiry. We shall discover later that the B belt seems to be devoted to the three primary occupations of life (excluding navigation) in about the same proportions in 1840, east and west, but that the increase of the agricultural element – and to a much less extent the manufacturing element – is apparently greater in the B belt West, while the increase of the commercial interest in this belt is greater in the East. (This last-named feature may be due to the influence of Long and Staten Islands.) Moreover, the A belt is, throughout, the commercial belt, and the B belt is more exclusively devoted to agricultural pursuits. Whence it appears that the phenomena of rapid agricultural and rapid alien growth are in the West coextensive, while commercial and alien growth would seem to go together in the East. To take the next step in the explanation it is needful to recollect the two classes or types of immigrants. The first class presumably sought altogether the western country with its larger opportunities. These resembled our native pioneers. They were the more courageous and ambitious, those yearning for an independent livelihood and a home which they could call their own, and which, though but a mere clearing in the forest, would yet secure to them and their families the blessings of freedom and opportunity. They went largely to settle on farms as tillers of the soil, and having generally little capital and being unable to purchase the most expensive lands along the waterways and in the thickly-settled districts, a large relative proportion often located in the rear townships. But on the contrary those of the second type – refugees from the congested peasantry of Europe – feeling more at home in crowded quarters, and drifting rather with the tide of events, clustered along the coast and in the older seaward districts, and gave themselves up to commercial pursuits in which they must assume a position of subordination. This seems to be the rational explanation of the distribution and changes in distribution of the alien population, the immense growth throughout the state and the disproportionately large growth in the western part. Such an explanation is somewhat labored and occult, perhaps, being so complex in the derivation of its premises, but it seems plausible from a deductive as well as an inductive basis of inquiry. And whether through the invigoration of commercial interests directly, or indirectly through the opening up of new regions to agriculture and to immigration, the guiding and shaping impulse of the canal is clearly discernible. From the statistical tables we turn for a brief consideration of the nationalities represented in the increase of alien population, and find that the Irish and Germans were by far the most numerous immigrants to the United States, and of these about 60 per cent more Germans entered in a period of 36 ¼ years than Irish; yet the resident population of New York State contained in 1855 over twice as many Irish born as German born, showing probably that the latter preferred to go west as pioneers, or at least out of the state. Even the English emigrants, though numbering hardly one-sixth as many as the Germans during this period, were one-half as numerous in the resident population. 51 Of course this was later than the period we discussed and other circumstances had influenced the conditions, yet it would seem to indicate that the Germans were of the first type of immigrants, the more intelligent and the more sturdy. We have now briefly to review the study of alien population, in concluding our treatment of that subject. Division III, as has been stated, contained a very trifling alien population in 1820 (about 3 unnaturalized male aliens per 1,000 inhabitants); but its alien population not only increased more rapidly than that of Division II, it further increased much faster than its own increase of total population, until, in 1835, its percentage of aliens exceeded that of Division II by a small margin, having multiplied tenfold. Reasons for this fact are to be found in the circumstances already recited. While such was the effect of the fifteen years of canal-building and operation on the counties of the western part of the state, in the subdivision comprising the border towns, lying without those counties, the same feature is seen to be accentuated. These western townships of the A belt possessed in 1820, in comparison with Belt B, even a smaller relative alien population, namely, an average of 3 per 1,000 inhabitants, or less than 300 aliens all told. They experienced a twelve fold increase of per capita figures, rendering the proportion of their alien population twice that of Belt B, instead of equal to it, as in 1820. Notwithstanding all this remarkable growth, as will appear from a survey of the compilations, the western border towns, however, failed to surpass the border towns of Division II in percentage of alien population at the close of the period. This review thus substantiates and emphasizes the conclusion that the canal is responsible to a considerable extent for a transfer of the zone of densest population and most intense activity from the parts of these western counties remote from the canal to its present location on the border strip. It would also seem probable that the greater per capita growth of the alien population in the newer regions of the West was the outcome of the fact that aliens resorting thither settled on the farms and engaged in agriculture to a somewhat greater extent than those remaining in the East, who apparently found congenial occupation in the trade, commerce or manufactures of the urban districts. Again, the significant fact must not be lost to sight that from twice to three times as many aliens per 100 inhabitants dwelt in the A as in the B zone and that the absolute increase in this A belt was remarkable and unprecedented. Subsequent history enables us to see that the change in the percentage of alien population during the period treated presages a great social revolution. The chain of evolution has been forged whereby the latest arrivals serve the nation as laborers, then rise to gentility, and their place is filled in turn by more recent comers. The wheel has been set endlessly turning and an upward impetus, a centrifugal force, given to society; but often-times so rapid has been this impetus that it has threatened to overwhelm our republic. Realizing that the alien never represents normal, natural increase, but always a growth due to commerce, virgin resources and alluring opportunities, we may easily draw the inference, well accredited by the magnitude of the hypothetical facts – the gains and the ratios – that it is one evidence at least of the stimulus created by the canal and one manifestation of its sweeping influence. ------------------------- Improved Land. Period Treated – 1821 to 1835. Turning from the subject of foreign population, we enter upon a consideration of agricultural statistics, and first, of the amount of improved land. 52 Division I is hardly worthy of consideration in this respect for obvious reasons, and we omit it altogether. In Division II an improvement in the direction of agriculture is noteworthy, the percentage of the total area improved increasing from 34 to 47, that is, a little more rapidly than the population. It just about holds its own with respect to the entire state. In Subdivision II-A, the border towns, on the other hand, although they experience the same percentage-gain, about 37 per cent, and although the amount of improved lands is increased from nearly ½ to 2/3 of the total area, yet the rapidity of increase only keeps pace with the increase of population. In fact the average amount of improved land per capita was one-tenth of an acre less in 1835 than in 1821. Here the relative increase of per capita figures is considerably more favorable to the B than the A belt of Division II. In so far as the difference does signify, it probably means simply this. With an average density of population from 70 per square mile in 1820 to 110 in 1840 on the river and canal front and available farm lands back in the next row of townships, the smaller cost of productive land therein was commencing to be a sufficient factor to compensate for the extra haulage of products to the navigable waterway, and the farmers were flocking in greater numbers, proportionately, to this more remote district and taking up and cultivating the rude lands. That the remote district at the start and throughout the period exhibits a larger per capita acreage of improved lands, indicates, however, that it was to a greater extent an agricultural district even before trade due to the canal enhanced the commercial activity of the border towns. This statement applies alike to Divisions II and III. In Division III the percentage of land improved is more than doubled in the fourteen-year period, so that the increase surpasses the increase of population and hence the per capita figures gain by 30 percent, there being 4.4 acres per capita under cultivation in 1835, as against 5.6 acres in Division II. With Subdivision III-A, however, the percentage of 18 (or one per cent less than Subdivision III-B) at the beginning, multiplies 2 ½ times, passing and materially exceeding at the close of the period the figure for the B belt, in spite of its per capita increase of 100 per cent. This is an increase greater than the increase of population, but not nearly so great relatively as that for the B belt, which doubles its percentage of area improved, so that the absolute per capita figures are not so great for the A belt in 1835 as for the B belt in 1821. Thus it appears that in 1821, and to a less extent in 1835, the present border towns of Division III were not nearly so well developed agriculturally as the remainder of the border counties. It is reasonable to suppose from this, especially in the light of the data previously discussed, that better lands by circumstance of fertility or accessibility originally lay back from the canal location and that these would naturally have become the seat of the greater prosperity; but the canal influence, entering forcibly at about the beginning of the period, imparted such artificial, advantages to the zones next bounding it as to build them up to a relatively greater extent than the other section. At the conclusion of this period the western section had not become so well developed agriculturally as Division II, although its population was by that time considerably more dense. From an examination of detail it will nevertheless appear from the percentages of improved land for the several sections that the back part of the counties did, as a matter of fact, attain an agricultural activity slightly greater than that of the corresponding zone of Division II, doubtless through its better relative start with respect to the adjoining A belt and its natural advantages, combined with the benefit due to unusual growth of population. It is not to be forgotten, however, that there was a decidedly greater increase in agricultural interests compared with population in the western than in the eastern section. This feature, common to both subdivisions, while somewhat characteristic of a new country, may be taken, when it is remembered that the growth in the West more directly reflects the influence of the canal, to illustrate the not inconsiderable immediate impulse given by the canal to the upbuilding of agricultural interests. Although the figures for the whole state show less rapid increase in agriculture than in other lines, the setback to its agricultural interests through competition with the produce of the far West came into prominence more particularly after the concluding date of this period. It was, in a measure, a direct consequence of the canal as a cheap through route for transportation from the interior of the country tributary to the Great Lakes, and thus a powerful testimonial to the effectiveness and indispensability of the trunk of the system. It would seem hardly reasonable on this ground to prefer against the canal, however, a charge of wrecking, or even injuring the agricultural interests of the state. The canal very likely hastened the competitive struggle somewhat, and lured it first into our midst, but we cannot presume that the same contest would have been withheld long in the absence of the canal, knowing as we do the subsequent history and efficiency of railroads. That so much of the competitive produce of the West was first and permanently turned into the channels leading across our state to contribute so largely to our commercial primacy rather than to be deflected elsewhere, had the opportunity been lost to this state, is, it would appear, one of the principal benefits which the Erie canal secured to us in its early days. ------------------------------ Number of Persons Engaged in Agriculture. Period Treated – 1820 to 1840. From the treatment of a certain phase of the general subject of agriculture we proceed to another point of view. Having considered the areas of land devoted to this pursuit, we come now to a discussion of its rank and attractiveness as an employment. 53 We deal no longer in acres of land but in numbers of men and percentages of the total population. We treat also of a period of time lengthened five years beyond the close of that heretofore considered, statistics for the same period not being available. By reason of the relative unimportance of Division I in this particular, it will be again ignored. In Division II we find that the number engaged in agriculture is somewhat less than doubled, but the percentage of the total population thus engaged is increased by about one-fourth its initial amount. In the subdivisions this percentage-increase of per capita figures is very nearly duplicated, though a much larger proportion of the inhabitants are thus employed in the B than in the A belt, both at the beginning and end of the period, verifying the conclusion that the district more remote from the waterway was from the start to a greater extent an agricultural district, the relative conditions of division and subdivision not being materially altered by the canal. Again, in Division III the percentage of the total population thus engaged increased but slightly from the beginning to the end of the period. The actual percentage-increase of numbers is a little less than the percentage-increase of acres of improved land in the shorter period from 1821 to 1835. The fact thus becomes apparent, or is confirmed, that the startling increase of Division III was in its commercial and manufacturing population. The percentage of the agricultural population was naturally lowered in the community by such an influx of persons engaged in manufacturing and commerce, which obviously, however, is not inconsistent with the known fact that the agricultural interests were liberally stimulated and the absolute number of persons thus employed greatly augmented. Even the percentage-increase experienced by Division III in numbers engaged in agriculture per 100 of the population is confined to the portion back from the canal, since Subdivision III-A indicates a slight loss in this respect. As we have now ascertained that in the rear townships a greater percentage of the population was engaged in the agricultural industry and a greater percentage of the area was devoted to this pursuit than in the border towns, we are, therefore, again led to the conclusion that agricultural development had proceeded to a state of considerable advancement in these rear townships before the beginning of canal activities. But, though by 1840 the advantages of the A belt afforded by proximity to the canal have induced a larger real agricultural growth than that which took place in the B belt, evinced by the far greater percentage-increase of absolute numbers engaged in agriculture, as well as by the larger percentage of improved land, yet so remarkable has been the increase in population, especially in urban population, that the percentage of the number of inhabitants engaged in agriculture is not even able to hold its own in Belt A, whereas in Belt B it rises several points during the twenty-year period. -------------------- Average Amount of Land Possessed by the Individual Engaged in Agriculture. Another study of passing interest suggests itself in connection with the agricultural data. By assuming that the acreage of improved land increased throughout the period 1820 to 1840 at the same rate as during the known period 1821 to 1835, we may obtain, by extrapolation, figures corresponding with the former dates, and by comparing the areas thus obtained with the number of persons employed in agriculture from 1820 to 1840, a crude idea of the size of farms in the respective districts may be obtained. 54 This study reveals the fact that during the double decade under consideration the amount of improved land per capita in both belts of Division II decreased, while in the two belts of Division III the same period of time saw an increase. In Division II the greatest change was in the border towns. In Division III the reverse condition obtained, decidedly the largest fluctuation which occurred anywhere being from 10 acres to 25 acres per capita in Subdivision III-B. It is further notable that the concluding figures are about alike for the two sections of the B belt (though slightly larger in the East), but are larger in the East than in the West for the A belt. Again in 1840, the number of acres per individual engaged in agriculture was throughout greater in the B belt than in the A belt (although practically the same throughout Division II), a condition exactly the reverse of the relations existing in 1820. The study simply suggests, not as a matter of proof but of rational conjecture, that in the new region, the western division, there was a tendency to larger per capita holdings. This may signify larger farms as well as more of them, but it probably means the employment of less help, due to the introduction of labor-saving devices, or to an educated intelligence and a more extensive application of the scientific principle to agricultural operations. The condition in the East, however, is more likely due to the overcrowding in a well-settled district, or to a more refined state of cultivation and a consequent reduction in size of farm, or holding, necessary to supply the individual and the limited or fixed patronage. This feature in Division II thus very poignantly supplements the discussion of increase of population of the agricultural as compared with the manufacturing or commercial district and tends to confirm the important principle there adduced, namely, that the agricultural district reaches at a moderate density a limit to rapid development, while the increase in population of the manufacturing district is practically unlimited. The average area of land which the farmers possessed, off of which to make a living, is seen in the older district to have been steadily reduced, while the average density of the newer region during the period had evidently not reached the limiting point. It would further appear probable that the western portion had not reached quite the development of the eastern, agriculturally – at any rate in the A belt – by the year 1840, and this despite its greater density of population. Or, the smaller per capita area of land in the West may be due to the circumstance of the well-known fertility of the middle section of the state, generally superior to that of the Hudson valley, so that a farmer might subsist on a smaller acreage west than east. Or again, the significant inference may be warranted to the effect that this smaller per capita area and the considerable increase in size of farm between 1820 and 1840 in the West is attributable to the change brought about in the character of crops raised. It is well understood that when our forefathers found competition from farther west overwhelming them in the production of grain as a staple article, many turned to fruit-raising and found that a more remunerative employment, until parts of our western lands have become famous for orchards and orchard products. Most significant of all, perhaps, and most completely explanatory of the conditions, is the supposition that where the advance guard of canal-builders found the scattered settlers tilling ground and growing food to supply a territory of a few miles’ radius – perhaps each man only his own and his neighbor’s table – the great waterway promptly opened up to them a much enlarged market for their goods and, by making transportation so cheap that it did not consume all the profits on produce shipped, enabled and encouraged the farmers to extend their lands and increase their crops far beyond the requirement of their local needs. Thus the number of acres per person engaged in agriculture increased in the western section, where the facilities had previously been poorest and where the improvement in means of communication was most pronounced. Again, that the acres per capita engaged in agriculture were more in the rear towns than in the border towns, might be supposed to signify that near the canal a man could more readily obtain a living, or in other words, that the minimum size of a farm which would support an individual and family was less in Belt A than in Belt B. This condition of things being conspicuous only in the West, where the canal was most effective and independent of other coordinate influences, and where, in this respect too, the relations of belts A and B had been exactly reversed since 1820, is a condition which would tend to show the utility of the canal and its effect as an economic force. A feature worthy of consideration in this connection and throughout the discussion, is the fact that the slaves were included in the schedule of persons engaged in the three gainful occupations enumerated in the 1820 census. These slaves were presumably employed for the most part as agricultural laborers. Now, as a result particularly of the relative growth of commercialism, the influx of foreigners and the increase of the small land-owning class, and also of the diffusion of knowledge and morality, the majority of the slave population was emancipated in 1827 in accordance with a statute of the year 1817. The number of slaves in New York had been decreasing rapidly for years, but as late as the 1820 census New York contained about ten thousand Negroes in bondage and outranked in this respect all the remaining states of the East, north of Mason and Dixon’s line. By the year of the next Federal census, that of 1830, but seventy-five slaves remained. From this statement it might be surmised that the first impulse of many of the ten thousand Negroes, on gaining their freedom, would be to shift quarters, and that a corresponding diminution of the numbers engaged in agriculture and an increase of the per capita acreage, would result, thus confusing the statistics and discrediting the deductions. However, as the acreage per capita engaged in agriculture in the East, where the slave-holding population must have been strongest, decreased both absolutely and relatively to the West, this factor would appear not to be of great weight. It is true, moreover, that the number of freedmen, that is, colored citizens, in the 1830 census appears to be about ten thousand in excess of the 1820 figures, plus the natural decennial increase. Thus the probability seems to be that the emancipated negroes remained as paid agricultural laborers (much as did the majority of the southern negroes) after being released, and that the redistribution, though of so considerable a body, had little influence on the conditions discussed. ------------------------------ Number of Persons Engaged in Manufacturing (including the Hand Trades). Period Treated – 1820 to 1840. Next to agriculture, the most important occupation in the state and nation of 1820-1840, as we review that period, appears to have been manufacturing. In respect to the numbers for whom this industry furnished a livelihood, Division I again takes the pronounced lead, both in absolute percentages employed and in increase from date to date. 55 It is reasonable to impute to the direct influence of the canal not a little of this improvement, and the best justification therefor is the fact that barges which cleared western grain and raw materials for New York had to obtain a return cargo, preferably in that city, a cargo which would consist naturally of merchandise and manufactured products. The beneficent effects of the canal in this respect we have discussed in our comparative study of New York and Philadelphia as old time rivals both in their commercial and manufacturing interests. And we have seen that manufacturing supremacy followed no less surely than commercial supremacy, only lagging behind it in point of time, as a less direct, or after effect. In both Divisions II and III the increase seems to have been noteworthy, being in the West practically twice as much as the increase in population; yet in spite of its far greater increase, at the close as at the beginning of the period, the West had a smaller percentage of its inhabitants engaged in manufacturing than the East. The inland had also a less percentage than the border towns. The B belt in both divisions increased less rapidly in this respect than the A belt, as would be expected from the superior transportation facilities of the latter. Such facilities, next to available power, always constitute the principal attraction to manufacturing interests. The study of the number of persons engaged in manufacturing, therefore, primarily emphasizes the remarkable increase, greater in the West than in the East, but even in the latter amounting to over 100 per cent, and leaving the West holding a better relative rank in the state as a manufacturing district in 1840 than in 1820. ------------------------------ Number of Manufacturing Establishments. Period Treated – 1821 to 1835. Total figures giving the number of manufactories in a district are deceptive, since the relative magnitude of the interests is not thereby indicated. A locality may have seen its factories all renewed and developed in manifold ways and still the total number scarcely altered. Statistics of the invested capital, or assets or real holdings, or valuation of output are necessary to an enlightened discussion of the subject. Such, however, are not obtainable for the period desired (except in the incomplete and unsatisfactory enumeration of the Federal census) and we are therefore limited to the information which other available data convey. For the year 1821 ten different classes of manufactories were reported in the census. For 1835 returns are given for these and also for several others. For the three main divisions of the state a compilation has been recorded in table No. 24 in full. The treatment of this item by subdivisions, however, was not deemed sufficiently instructive for publication. A glance at the grand totals for the several divisions (table No. 40) will demonstrate the statement made above in regard to the unreliability of these totals as indices of growth or prosperity. It appears that the number of establishments of the ten kinds diminished from 1821 to 1835 throughout the entire eastern section, Division I included, while but a slight progressive movement can be detected in the western region. This does not mean merely that the per capita figures or percentages decreased, but that the actual number of manufactories of the ten different kinds was in many cases less in 1835 than fourteen years previously. Aside from the explanation already suggested, this condition is accounted for by the fact that many minor works, such as oil mills and asheries, prolific in 1821, were by 1835 outgrown, so to speak, by the community and becoming obsolete, while works too insignificant for enumeration in 1821 had in fourteen years attained some considerable prominence. The appearance of a smaller total number of manufacturing establishments in 1835 than in 1821 is so misleading that further treatment has been given, and the totals compared with numbers of persons engaged in manufacturing and the hand trades in these years, as interpolated from census years, according to the general method pursued in finding the per capita holdings of land. 56 The results have little absolute value. They ignore the numerous persons engaged in hand trades, who have nothing to do with manufacturing concerns, and the establishments vary so widely in size and purposes as to be hardly susceptible of collective treatment. Yet these results are in correct relation, one with another. They have a meaning, therefore, and a brief survey suffices to exhibit its bearing on the discussion. Using a certain amount of license, we have assumed the final figures to represent the Average Number of Persons per Factory, and we observe that during these 14 years this number increased from 31 to 673 in Division I, in Division II from 6 ½ to 12 and in Division III from 4 to 10 persons, and these gains in spite of the multiplication of machinery and the corresponding displacement of labor. Thus we are simply led by a different course to the same explanation of the falling-off in numbers of establishments. It was the small and crude pioneer mills and asheries which were disappearing. The opulent industries were steadily gaining ground and multiplying. Turning next to the detailed figures for the mills and concerns of similar character, it will be apparent that the decrease has been confined largely to oil and fulling mills, carding-machines, trip hammers, distilleries and asheries; that sawmills, cotton and woolen factories, iron works – especially the newer industries and those representing probably far the most capital and business – were flourishing and superseding the rest. Gristmills, generally second in rank through the different divisions, but slightly decreased. By their permanence and long standing they constitute something of a criterion, by comparison with which to judge of the growth of other branches of industry. The case of Division I furnishes an illustration of certain of these typical conditions and changes. Although, no doubt, the average value of the production of a single manufactory was greater in New York City than elsewhere in the state, yet inspection reveals the fact that for 1835 this division supported only one-fortieth to one-eightieth as many establishments as either of the two remaining divisions. In other words, the number of establishments is far from being a correct measure of the manufacturing progress or relative prosperity of a community. In Division I, also, the greatest numerical change from 1821 to 1835 is in the disappearance of asheries, and here likewise, the growth of the iron industry is particularly noticeable. In Divisions II and III sawmills are the most numerous establishments, and in point of increase rank about third. At the conclusion of the period the number of these mills in Division III has increased over 1 ½ times and there are nearly as many of them as of all the other manufactories covered under the ten classes and taken together. Although the average sawmill does not represent a large outlay, nor an industry continuous the year round, still these figures illustrate the relative growth of lumbering east and west, and especially in the western and newer region, where it had been so wonderfully stimulated by the intervention of the canal. Moreover, the depletion of the asheries, conspicuous throughout, so far from being a mark of retrogression, is a measure of the growth of lumbering on a negative scale. When facilities for transporting timber materialized, it came to be too valuable a commodity to burn for the sake of the ash. In that connection it is interesting to reflect that timber more than perhaps any other kind of raw material demands water transportation, and without that instrumentality will, in considerable quantities, rot in the forests, even during such stringency as in our day dominates the market. It is likewise instructive to remember that the sawmill was often, like the church and the schoolhouse, a distinctive, indispensable feature of the pioneer settlement. In fact, not infrequently the sawmill antedated the village and was the means of bringing it into being. 57 Continuing the study of the tables, it appears that a slight increase in the number of fulling mills and carding-machines prevailed in Division III, though the decrease in these two lines was quite pronounced in the other divisions. The two branches of industry remain, however, among the most largely represented in the several divisions. The distilleries and asheries were the most notably reduced generally, the iron works the most obviously prospered throughout, increasing over twofold in Divisions II and III and threefold in Division I. The cotton and woolen mills, on the other hand, multiplied one and one-half times only in Division III, but doubled in number in Division II, a circumstance interesting as contrary to the usual comparative rate of increase in the East and the West. Neither the iron works nor the cotton and woolen mills had become, by the end of this period, however, so numerous as several other classes of manufacturing establishments. The apparent feature of these returns is that the western district progressed more rapidly than the eastern, the total figures showing an increase in number of concerns for the West, but little short of a decrease for the East. It may be further suggestive to note that the nine additional classes of manufactories covered by the 1835 census had, no doubt, to a large extent sprung into prominence since 1820, so that the increase among them would exhibit a larger rate than among those discussed. It will be seen from the exhibit of numbers of the several manufacturing establishments that there is a marked uniformity in the per capita figures of Divisions II and III in 1835, the fulling mills, carding-machines, iron works and distilleries being in approximately the same relative abundance in the two sections of the state, while the sawmills, creditably to the development of the lumbering industry in the virgin forests rendered accessible by the canal, are even slightly more numerous in the West than in the East. And although the average number employed in a single establishment, indicating the average size of manufactory, is, at the concluding date, presumably greater in Division II, yet the numbers of establishments per ten thousand of the population in 1835 are rather favorable to the West, and the increase from 1821 to 1835 on that same basis is decidedly more imposing in Division III, that is, along the line of the great canal. ------------------------------ Number of Persons Engaged in Commerce and Navigation. Period Treated – 1820 to 1840. In a sense agriculture is the fundamental occupation of mankind. Manufacturing partakes strongly of this primary character also; but that third employment to which we now direct our attention, commerce – the intercourse between communities – is most of all a parasitic industry, whose growth always springs from some ulterior and more fundamental source. Commerce is not directly a productive agency and it flourishes only because of productivity somewhere else, whether within or without the state. Yet not only is it retroactive in the service and stimulus it affords that productivity, but, being practically necessary to a civilized people, is allowed a commission, so to speak, on the original yield, and that commission it distributes among its followers so as to constitute quite as acceptable an income as if derived immediately from the soil or the mine – the elementary principles, or the raw materials of Nature. As already explained, the scope of the term commerce in 1820 is uncertain, though probably covering the ground of both commerce and navigation in the 1840 census, whence, although comparison has been made both on this assumption and on the second hypothesis that the term commerce, as used in the two years, has the same signification, yet the first or broader interpretation is given greater weight in the discussion. It is to be understood that the treatment of the totals under the column-heading, Navigation, relates to the sum of the figures for commerce and navigation in the year 1840. 58 First, it will be seen that the percentages of population engaged in commerce are comparatively small throughout, being of course largest in Division I, where five percent of the people are, in 1840, engaged in commerce and navigation, a percentage twice as great as in 1820. The largest percentage-gains are in Division III and more specifically in Subdivision III-A, the absolute gain per 100 of the population being practically the same there as in Division I, on the first, though somewhat less on the second hypothesis. Furthermore, the larger gains are in the border towns rather than in the more remote zone, which is as would be anticipated. The smallest initial figures are those for the western B belt, showing 2-10 percent of the population as engaged in commerce, although only 3-10 percent are thus engaged in the corresponding A belt. In 1840, however, the western B belt has only 6-10 percent at the most favorable figure, but the percentage of the population of the A belt engaged in commerce is five times as great, or in commerce with navigation seven times as great as in 1820. The figures of Division III increase from 4-10 in 1820 to 8-10 in 1840, of the average figures for the state; and this on either basis considered. Still, at the same time, the rank in this respect of each, Division I and Division II, is slightly lowered. In terms of percentage-increase we have for Division III nearly 600, or on the more probable hypothesis over 900 – that is, the numbers commercially engaged in 1840 were tenfold those engaged in 1820 – decidedly the most striking of any similar figures throughout the triple schedule of employment. The comparison, too, is the more favorable to the West, when the splendid commercial facilities of the Hudson are considered, and when it is remembered that the eastern inland belt, so-called, includes the maritime counties of Suffolk, Nassau, Queens and Richmond. Division III, on the first basis treated, has practically the same percentage of its population employed in commerce in 1840 as has Division II, notwithstanding the smaller percentage of persons engaged in the three gainful occupations in the West; and, were the two counties of Suffolk and Richmond excluded, the percentage of those engaged in commerce and navigation for Division II would be likewise reduced to a parity with that of Division III, while comparing only the A belt east and west in 1840, these absolute per capita figures are seen to be, on the more probable assumption, 50 percent greater for the West. Yet obviously the B belt west is less given to commerce than the B belt east, a condition which is not only due to the omission of the A belt through the maritime counties, but to the equalizing influence of the item of ocean navigation. Presumably figures based on this item vary in general according to the distance from the coast, Belt A being for some ways upstream nearly indistinguishable from Belt B in this respect. That the density of commercial population varies according to the distance from the waterway more largely in the West than in the East, again tends to fix upon the canal the responsibility for the phenomenon with greater appearance of certainty. Indeed, it would be difficult to produce a more brilliant and convincing testimonial than these statistics present, if they have been interpreted aright. They furnish a picture, in 1820, of a relatively well-established and thickly-settled strip of territory bordering one of the grandest of our navigable rivers, extending from the best ocean harbor on the continent one hundred and fifty miles inland to the limit of tide-water, and thence stretching along the shores of a generally navigable tributary, the fertility of whose valley was world-famous; and they present as a contrast to this strip another, extending westerly from it through a frontier country, sparsely populated, remote from the sea – a strip which was at an early date less populous than the adjoining land, commercially insignificant and possessing no conspicuous facilities for navigation or commerce, nor even distinguishable from the neighboring country by any demarkation save the imaginary line of a canal through its midst. In the comparatively brief period of twenty years the second strip had eclipsed the first and had become, even to a greater extent than the first, devoted to commercial pursuits. Whatever may have been the fundamental essentials, such as fertility of tributary area and predetermined trend of population, the canal, as the only transporting agency worthy of the name, was so clearly indispensable to the efficient exploitation of these fundamentals as to be deserving of the principal credit for the transformation which visited its shores. ------------------------------ General Discussion of the Triple Schedule of Occupations. We have, up to this point, considered separately the three or four branches of the schedule of employments and it behooves us now to examine the relations of these occupations among themselves. It will be seen that the eastern division has a larger percentage of its population engaged in gainful occupations than the western and this difference is enhanced in 1840. The circumstance affects somewhat our comparisons and is probably not to be accounted for by the supposition of more females than males, since the latter are usually in excess in a new country. Yet as celibacy tends to flourish and size of families may be supposed smaller in a well-settled district, the phenomenon of a smaller percentage gainfully employed in the West may be possibly due to the prevalence of these conditions, especially in 1820. The same conditions may have held in 1840, because of the less productivity of the East more than compensating for its smaller density of population. If a larger family could be supported on a western farm, it was testimony both to the inherent virtues of the soil and to the facilities making the output of that soil marketable. Resuming the study of the several divisions, we infer that these three vocations relatively occupied a greater number of the inhabitants in Divisions II and III where the total percentage of the population thus employed amounted to nearly 30 in each case, than in either New York State or City. In New York City (Division I) the percentage was approximately 20.5 and we find the difference of about 10 percent accounted for by the insignificance of the agricultural industry and the greater diversity of occupation in the city, to which the triple schedule of the census does not do justice. We find that in Division I figures for all these three items increased by some 400 percent, yet manufactures less rapidly than commerce and navigation (on the more reliable hypothesis). In Divisions II and III, separately, as in the state at large, agricultural numbers increased least, manufacturing more rapidly, and commercial most rapidly of all. The progress of Division II bears the semblance of a "lag effect" of the progress of Division III. For the numbers engaged in agriculture in the West increase by as great a percentage as those engaged in manufacturing in the East, and those in manufacturing in the West as rapidly as those engaged in commerce and navigation in the East. The several items of percentage-increase stood in the relation of 3, 4 and 10 in Division II, but of 4, 10 and 37 in Division III, always considering commerce and navigation as a unit. Thus again is emphasized the commercial prosperity of Division III. A few general remarks on the conditions and growth of the state as a unit may perhaps serve to interpret the industrial conditions and illustrate the essence of some of the relations we have attempted to trace in detail. It will be observed that commerce as an occupation absorbed the interests of the people to a far greater extent in 1840 than in 1820; that in fact, where in the earlier year less than 66 in every 10,000 of the population was thus engaged, there prevailed in 1840 on the average nearly three times that proportion engaged in commerce and navigation. Instead of 440 per 10,000 as in 1820 there had come to be in 1840 a manufacturing population of 710, on the same basis. And even in the field of agricultural enterprise there were now 1,880 persons instead of 1,800 distributed through each group of 10,000 of the total population, thus indicating an improvement during the two decades. We observe that in the state the increase is thus throughout most favorable for commerce, next for manufacturing and least of all for agricultural pursuits. When the relative magnitude of the several industries is considered, however, the order is reversed. Of the several items we find agriculture giving employment to three or four times as many persons as manufacturing and from 10 to 30 times the numbers engaged in commerce. Yet, in the pursuit of agriculture, there were at work in 1840 only about 19 per one hundred of the population, so that all three classes do not represent more than 28 per one hundred of the population, male and female, in that year. The relative importance of the very slight increase or decrease is, however, magnified for this very reason. ------------------------------ Assessed Valuation of Property. Period Treated – 1820 to 1835. There is still one subject which is often regarded as a prime index to social progress and which we proceed to investigate. Data on valuation are subject to the considerable fluctuations of the money market and thus present a somewhat treacherous source of information, especially where a single year is accepted as representative of a period, or where statistics for years in different periods are compared without a recognition of the shifting currency. Assessed valuation, moreover, is not a product of the application of scientific principles of measurement, but rather the aggregate verdict of varying judgment. It is seldom even identical with the full estimated market value. Yet valuation commonly rises with prosperity and is a useful indication, at least in all comparisons. We have seen already that the year 1822 marks a minimum stage in the period of decline in assessed values of New York State property and that this year is followed by an increase continuing with hardly a serious interruption to the present day. That fact in itself is of absorbing interest in connection with the study of the period which we discuss and the forces directing the progress it exhibits, and therefore we are glad to investigate more in detail the phenomenon of increasing valuation between 1820 and 1835. It will be seen by reference to table No. 22 that the real property throughout greatly exceeds the personal in assessed valuation – a normal condition – and further that the percentage-gains are much superior in the personal class, especially in the western district. The largest percentage-increase of real property is found in Division I, of personal property, in Division III. 59 Division I is seen to possess, as would be expected, far the largest per capita valuation, and yet its growth from immigrating aliens and the impecunious classes is evidently such that it does not keep up with the state in percentage-increase of personal property. Its splendid prosperity and relative importance may be appreciated, however, from the fact that the mere increase in valuation per capita during the period under consideration is, in the case of real property, somewhat in excess of the full valuation in 1835 of either of the other divisions, and far in excess of the other divisions taken together, in the case of personal property. In Division II the real property makes a poorer display and the per capita valuation is considerably less in 1835 than in 1820. Even the personal property does not increase as rapidly as for the state, but enough to double the per capita valuation. In Division III the increase is, throughout, more marked than in Division II, yet neither final figures reach those of that division, the personal being $21 as compared with $42.50 for Division II, and $261 for Division I, the real $144, $153 and $568, respectively. Yet its per capita valuation of personal property in 1820 was but $5.10, so that this figure is quadrupled. In both real and personal property it has increased its relative standing in the state. We are unable to ascertain the township valuations at the earlier date, and therefore must omit the attractive study of valuation according to the distance from the canal, yet this could hardly fail to confirm other results derived and must needs show an abnormally high valuation in the townships adjoining the canal. What our tabular review does attest, however, is the magnificent proportions of the growth and estate of the city represented by Division I, the history of whose existence dates back of that period nearly two centuries, yet the valuation of whose property increased in this decade and a half by 250 per cent and thus at least trebles if it can not be said to quadruple, and whose population, though multiplying faster than that of any of its New World competitors, yet lags far behind its properties in their enhancement. The figures display a coincident phenomenon pertaining to that section of the "up state" we have denominated Division III, differing only in the smaller beginnings upon which a like stimulus operates. That its increase in real property valuation more than keeps pace with the growth of population is alone noteworthy, especially when it is observed that the eastern division loses in its real per capita valuation during the same time. Yet when we consider that the average individual holdings of personal estate are quadrupled and reflect that the influx of population has not been from among the ranks of established wealth but rather of "honest poverty," we are prone to acknowledge the potency and beneficence of the influences, which have enabled the average man to become four times richer in the commodities of life – to live, as it were, four times more comfortably. ------------------------------ Recapitulation of Statistics. We undertook the foregoing statistical examination of New York State with the avowed object of measuring on different scales the influence of the canal, of tracing the penetration of that influence and the range, as well as the magnitude, of its ramifications. Therefore, we pause in an effort to place clearly before the reader the several ways in which the statistics already presented bear witness to this influence. First, we have ascertained that New York State and the three divisions most affected by the canal were increasing in population but slowly in the earliest portion of the period which we discuss, and that New York City was actually decreasing and even through the period of 1814-1820 continued to lose in its relative standing in the state. 60 Following this period of slow progress, we recognize a marked acceleration imparted to the growth of the state and the three divisions, causing a much more rapid development throughout the remainder of our period than in other portions and in other states, which had hitherto paralleled or surpassed the State of New York in her career. 61 We see, during the double decade following the first opening of the canal, some peculiar features characterizing the progress of the several divisions, in the mean of all of which the wonderful but complex growth of the Empire State consists. We discover, indeed, a striking growth of all sections in all important respects. That circumstance, however, is too general to serve our purposes. We desire to localize the issue, to focus the consequences back to their origin. In our effort to realize this aim we have detected numerous pronounced eccentricities of growth as a direct outcome of the canal, as, for example, in the unprecedented increase experienced by Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo, and a host of other cities and towns along the great waterway, and in the well-attested transformation of their sites, their industries and their tributary territory – all of which is historic and incontrovertible. Again, we have observed that in 1814 the only data accumulated for that early period, namely data on population, show the border townships along the line of the projected canal in the western section inferior in development to the townships back of them. 62 In 1821, too, the percentage of improved land is greater away from the canal; and in 1820 the percentage of aliens and the percentage of the population engaged in commerce are both substantially the same throughout the western border counties, irrespective of the distance away from the canal line. It is hardly necessary to add that, while by contrast the border and inland towns of the East maintained throughout the same general relations, and indeed in population and agricultural statistics at least increased in parallel courses, yet in the West the border towns, increasing from early canal days with altogether disproportionate speed, had, at the conclusion of the period, in all respects save perhaps that of agriculture, attained a higher standing relative to the rear belt than that which the border towns in the East occupied with reference to the corresponding rear belt, or strip, more remote from the waterways. With respect to the aliens it is likewise significant that the increase throughout the state has been striking beyond all comparison. The attraction of the steamship lines to New York City – in itself, apparently, more or less a consequence of the canal traffic – is partially responsible for this unique aspect of progress and expansion. The brilliant prospect awaiting the settler in the "up state" was perhaps the chief element, however, serving to entice the foreigner and to restrain him from further journeyings in a westerly direction. All this we have discussed. Yet it is worthy of consideration again that the density of alien population might, for many reasons, be expected to increase in passing from the seacoast to the frontier, as it actually did in New York State in 1820; and thus it is suggestive to demonstrate that twenty years later there existed a percentage of alien population appreciably greater in the border counties west of the head waters of the Mohawk than east of this same divide. 63 That is to say, where the effect of the canal operated more powerfully, there the incoming foreigners settled, disregarding the law which would otherwise have governed their distribution. Are we not compelled, therefore, to award some measure of acknowledgment to the canal, that greatest of the internal improvements of the era, for inducing the immigration which has since steadily increased and has exercised so potent an influence in its turn upon the development of our nation and our national economy? Indeed, in all those features where the influence of the canal is most keenly felt, however great or small that influence may be, the progress of the period is the most abundant and the splendor of the age the most illustrious. If it be a question of occupations, then we turn to the commercial pursuit as the livelihood most likely to be subject to the influence of the canal and discover that in this, as in no other of the three grand vocations enumerated, men found increasingly attractive and lucrative employment. Or turn to the consideration of locality, and from whatsoever direction we approach the canal or the waterways leading into it we encounter greater and greater density of population and increasing intensity of development and rapidity of multiplication in all the productive capacities in which the "Federation of the World" is busied – this with scarcely an exception. Where there is an exception it appears to be always trivial in character or else it relates to that occupation having the least direct susceptibility to the local services of a trunk waterway, namely, the pursuit of agriculture. Or again, to carry this consideration of locality a step further, we recede, in our study of the census, from the coast towards the lakes. When we have left the great distributing point, the City of New York, and its environs – when past the ancient valley of the Hudson and up the Mohawk and then at length in the heart of the newly-settled region, we pause. The journey reveals a paradox. As the settlement becomes more recent, the density and business activity increase. The western shores of the new artificial waterway, before that waterway was in operation, contained a relatively insignificant population, both native and alien, and constituted the minimum of the three divisions in development of land and of manufacturing and commercial industries. Now, at the close of the period, this belt is the peer of its eastern territorial counterpart in valuation of real property per capita and in percentage of population engaged in navigation, surpasses it in the abundance of sawmills and gristmills, the percentage of aliens, the percentage of population engaged in commerce, and has actually far outstripped the eastern belt in density of population. And the time required for this transformation is, generally speaking, less than twenty years. Thus it is that whatever domain of industry or section of territory would appear to be most susceptible to the effects of the canal for progress or retrogression, that field of human enterprise exhibits during this canal era, as it were, the maximum of prosperity and vigor and growth. Thus it seems to be needful to ascribe a wide influence to the canal, and to that influence the attribute of beneficence in a liberal degree. Of New York City we have seen previously how superior was its growth to that of its competitors, that were, but whose rivalry it had outgrown by the end of the period. We have here only the same story to read again with new illustrations. Division I had a maximum increase among the several divisions in its absolute figures, almost without exception. It increased its percentages engaged in manufactures and in commerce and navigation by the maximum figure, virtually doubling those percentages in twenty years. Its iron works and cotton and woolen mills multiplied as did no others in any section of the state and it laid at this time the foundations not only of its commercial and financial supremacy but of its manufacturing importance and its unique, cosmopolitan growth. We have seen how in the western part of the state the farms apparently increased in size as the facilities for transportation improved and the market was thereby enlarged, causes which, operating collectively, led to the development of specific crops, like the wheat crop, to an extent heretofore unknown, until in 1840 nearly one-third of the state was under cultivation. We have seen, too, how much greater was the stimulus invariably afforded during the period to commerce and manufactures than to agriculture, how the towns adjoining the canal and river possessed, relatively to other districts, greater commercial and manufacturing than agricultural interests and increased more rapidly in the former, while in respect to agricultural increase the neighboring rear towns surpassed them. And, from the point of view of a hundred years ago, we have been able to forecast something of the condition of our proud, imperial State today, had it been deflected in those early times rather to agricultural than to commercial pursuits. In order to make that prophecy, we have studied incidentally the law of growth of the agricultural community. In the eastern part we have seen it exemplified. There has taken place, apparently, a decrease in size of farms, and there the average density for the period is the greater. Thus we conclude that the decrease is the result of an overcrowding and is a signal for a decline in rapidity of growth. Again, we have, pictured before us in the figures from 1840 to 1900, the low, retarded rate of growth of the rural district (such as Division IV) after reaching a moderate density of population, as compared with the rapid, vigorous increase of Division III, or even the less active Division II, and in that contrast we perceive to what lasting and preponderating advantages our state has fallen heir in her commercial preeminence, which she justly ascribes in so large a measure to the intervention of the canal. Yet withal, we ascertain that throughout those early canal days the gains in agricultural interests were the rule and losses the exception. If the diversion of agricultural prestige from our own farms to those of the West be charged against the canal, it is only fair to remember the splendid impetus given to the cultivation of grains and the flour trade and the like in the country opened up by the Erie canal, and to reflect that, not until the era of railroad-building, did the supremacy of these industries in New York collapse and the agricultural interests of the state enter into serious and damaging competition with the greater West – an occurrence no public policy could long have postponed. Indeed, this was a "Golden Age," when there were practically no decreases, the determination of the progress of which resolves itself into a study of differentials, a selection of the superlative from amidst a concourse of comparatives. Thus while the state was increasing abundantly, the eastern section was increasing at a less rate generally and the western at a greater rate. Not only in density of population, but in its manufacturing and commerce, and in its valuation of real and personal property, so far as our data extend. Division II exhibits a growth inferior to that of the state as a whole, and even in its improved land per capita the former fails of a more rapid increase than the latter. The real growth of the division – the prosperity of that which remained to it – was commendable, but much of the stimulating effect of the age was obscured by the heavy drought made on the East to develop and prosper the West. In the West the conditions were reversed. Division III, which in the early years had been an inland agricultural belt so far as it was settled at all, had risen to greater commercial prominence than the border counties along the natural waterways – the Hudson and the Mohawk rivers – and had surpassed Division II in its per capita gains of density of population, numbers engaged in manufactures and in commerce and navigation, numbers of aliens and valuation of real property. Its percentage-increase was greater in the size of its farms and of its manufacturing establishments. This division increased during that period as fast as New York State in agriculture and more rapidly in all the other considerations, and it is today what the canal indisputably made it in the formative era of its infancy, the flower of the "up state," a most distinctive, illustrious and imposing memorial to the influence of that Father of American artificial waterways, the Erie canal. ------------------------------- FURTHER INDICES OF THE INFLUENCE OF THE CANAL. Discussion of Plate No. V. Using the data we have, up to this point, collected and discussed, we are now able to give a somewhat more comprehensive and specific statement of the relative progress of all the states and the various local divisions of territory which we have studied. On the basis of population we desire to compare the growth of all these sections. Obviously, a direct comparison of census figures before and after the canal would have little meaning; and we have, in foregoing pages, explained the disadvantages of comparison, on the one hand, of percentage-gains, which are normally high in any newly-settled district, and, on the other hand, of figures showing absolute increase of density, inasmuch as the latter will be naturally low in any newly-settled locality and relatively high in any older community. Thus we have to seek a standard for comparison, which gives due weight to both these elements, namely, rapidity of multiplication and mere volume of increase, neither of which alone is an unfailing criterion. The case has many counterparts, however, in the field of scientific mensuration. The measure of a force is the product of the acceleration it produces in any body and the mass of the body on which it produces that acceleration. Reasoning from analogy, therefore, we have assayed to measure the real growth of a region by the product of its average density and its percentage-increase during a given period. We have taken a succession of such products as derived in table No. 19 and represented them to scale on plate No. V in the order of diminishing magnitude. Plate No. V, therefore, exhibits in the most rational way the comparative growth of the country during early canal times; and because merely verifying in a striking manner many of the conclusions which we have heretofore drawn, it does not require extended discussion. The noticeable features are that Division III (the western counties of New York, bordering on the canal) presents a more favorable showing than any other section of the United States, that Michigan (the state next to New York most affected by the transportation facilities provided by our great waterway) ranks second in the list and first among the states of the Union, that the three other border states on the lakes follow immediately after Michigan, and that, except for Massachusetts, the State of New York stands next. Thus, with this one exception, which we have in previous pages explained, New York heads the list not only of the older eastern states, but of all those remaining, including the new states of the South. It is further interesting to note the relative standing of Divisions IV and II, the latter through the drain of emigration westward tending to keep down the record of the state at large. All in all the diagram is an impressive epitome of the Influence of the canal. ------------------------------ Articles Transported on the Canal in 1824 and in 1834. There is a subject omitted from our statistical study thus far, which has an important bearing on the condition of the country and measures to a certain extent the effects of canal-building, and we therefore proceed to a more intricate study of the products of the state, although we have heretofore used certain of the well-known facts which this study establishes. In the absence of data previous to the census of 1840 relating to the productivity of the several regions of the state – the specific crops and their distribution – we have attempted to obtain from the detailed figures of canal movements through the several years some view of the change in kind and magnitude of production. There are only desultory records preserved to us of the traffic on the canals in the years previous to about 1835. These records are generally complete for clearances and arrivals at West Troy (on the Erie and Champlain canals) and at Buffalo, and there is a continuous record up to the year 1835 of the passages at Utica in both directions. There was also kept during many of those years a register of shipments passing Whitehall on the Champlain canal, and now and then a separation was reported of the goods shipped to and from points west of Buffalo and out of the state. From such scattering records we have compiled tables Nos. 41 and 42 for two years, 1824 and 1834, the years of that early period in which the availability of all items incident to the discussion obtain to the greatest extent. In 1824, at the beginning of the period, all but about eighty miles of the canal had been opened, so that the western section had been well penetrated, but the shipments on the canal as yet practically all originated within New York State. It was necessary even in those years, however, to estimate or neglect the changes in the character of the traffic between Whitehall and West Troy on the Champlain canal and to approximate from extraneous data to the portion of the Buffalo receipts and clearances with which other states should be credited. The original records being, likewise, in standard denominations, such as prevail for the particular articles – some in dry measure and some in liquid, some linear and some volumetric – it has been necessary to reduce all figures to common terms of 2,000-pound tonnage, and necessarily, too, some approximation has been here involved. The various stages in the process of reduction are reproduced, or indicated at least, in the tables. The columns headed Out-of-state, Erie and Champlain and Utica, East and West are fundamental and are believed to be accurate. The ultimate deductions under columns, Total Erie, East and West and Output of Division III are subject to not a few uncertainties, yet the most doubtful elements entering into their composition enter gradually through the factors of the least relative magnitude. The doubtful out-of-state data, for example, were of comparatively small importance in 1834 and the uncertain tonnage on the Champlain was by far the minor portion of the total tonnage for both canals taken together. Thus, with the preliminary warning that literal precision is not to be imputed to the data on which our study is based, we may proceed to compare the traffic in the early days of the canal and that at the close of the first decade. In order to undertake this discussion the more readily and to pursue it more clearly, the results have been embodied and amplified in table No. 43, which is self-explanatory. A glance over the last-named table will emphasize the fact that a very marked increase took place in the detailed movements between the years 1824 and 1834. Many new articles of transportation appear and shipments of staple goods had increased abundantly. It is of little interest and significance, however, to note that the forest products were shipped in quantities seven to eight times as great in 1834 as in 1824, and others increased in ratios almost as striking. The uncertainty with reference to the conditions in the earlier year and the knowledge that the last section of the canal through to Buffalo was still closed, vitiate the apparent significance of such data. But it is the purpose of this study rather to point out that, for example, products of the forest increased most of all the general classes. Of agricultural products those pertaining to animals increased with the least rapidity, while the vegetable foods and vegetable products generally made striking gains. Such figures are not to be taken as indicating altogether the variations in the productions of the districts. It is clear that perishable butter and cheese would not admit of the ease of handling and time of shipment which would favor their adaptability to canal transportation. Lumber and wheat and grain were more suitable to that purpose and their cultivation more largely stimulated through the facilities provided by the canal. There is, however, the opposite point of view, namely, that, since the canal stimulated industries depending on these bulky, non-perishable products, they might rationally be expected to show a superior increase of production. When a detailed inquiry is made, it becomes apparent in the comparison that the lumbering industry has been exceedingly benefited. There is considerable question as to the integrity of the figures which appear under the items timber and lumber in the final columns, entitled Erie, East and West, but inspection of the fundamental columns, numbered (1), for the two years will demonstrate beyond a doubt that the ratios of the figures for 1834 to those for 1824 are relatively very large, and the more reliable column, entitled Output of Division III, exhibits ratios many times larger yet. Of the several items of forest products it will be seen that timber is the most conspicuous, and yet that the increase in lumber transported amounts to a great deal more in absolute figures, this constituting generally the largest proportion by weight of the traffic in forest products. The raw materials of the industry – timber and corded wood – make up together the smaller proportion by weight of the traffic in forest products. This circumstance is the rational outcome of the fact that the logging is done where the forests exist, largely nearer the head waters of the streams, and that before reaching the canal this raw material has been prepared for market by the sawmill. Yet in those early days the canal and its tributaries did penetrate many heavily timbered tracts and numerous rafts of logs floating along the canal towards the Hudson river constituted a familiar sight, we are told, to the observer of half a century ago. Thus the amount of raw forest products transported was, after all, not inconsiderable. The canal indeed furnished a great impetus to the lumbering industry by penetrating the newer regions, by connecting with the numerous streams and by supplying a type of transportation facility almost ideal for the needs of the traffic; and the rapid multiplication of sawmills, especially in the western part of the state, testifies to this stimulus. Although the lumber industry deserves first rank in the magnitude of its several classes of shipments and in its relative increase, yet if the sum total of all agricultural products be considered, the amount of the latter is not inferior either in 1824 or in 1834, and one of these agricultural products stands conspicuously in the lead among all the articles shipped upon the canal. That product is flour. Its shipments have multiplied seven times in the ten years, and in 1834 constitute from twenty to thirty per cent of the total movements. Naturally wheat has increased – though because of the development of local milling interests, in less degree – and coarse grain exhibits a wonderful improvement. Passing from the lumbering and agricultural to the manufactured products, we are impressed with the paucity of the latter and their slender growth during the decade. There is a partial explanation of this circumstance in the fact that the two previous classifications cover the output of the most numerous manufactories, namely, sawmills and gristmills, as well as some others. The factory products, too, are not bulky, though of greater value. They will thus sustain a higher ton-mileage rate and so are less favored by canal facilities. Merchandise, a somewhat equivocal term, took the first rank among all items, as will be seen, in 1824, the magnitude of shipments thus classified being greater in that year than of flour or lumber. Yet in the course of the decade it did not increase with such rapidity as to retain this standing. The shipments of domestic spirits increased largely. The figures for salt are of uncertain derivation and probably do little justice to the traffic in that article, the invigoration of which both at the Onondaga salt springs and later in the more westerly district was a notable achievement of the canal service. The item furniture comprises largely household goods and thus reflects to some extent the stimulus given to emigration from the East. Both furniture and merchandise are principally return, or westbound, shipments and a large proportion of each passes out of the state. From an examination of the fundamental columns a more reliable conception of the benefit thus afforded the manufactories along the canal and in New York City may be obtained. The columns relating to the whole traffic of the Erie canal and to the traffic west of Utica are largely corroborative, the one of the other. There appear to be no sharp contrasts, unless it be that the outputs of Division III exhibits a far more favorable increasing respect to timber and shingles. The total of forest products, however, is not markedly greater for Division III than for the entire section. The fact is noticeable that the percentage-gains for Division III are, throughout the agricultural and forest products, materially greater than for the entire canal. The more rapid development of the western section is thus verified anew. Finally, our survey of these tables would not do justice to its exhibit, were we to ignore the great average percentage-increase of the traffic during the decade, namely, more than 350 per cent. That eighty miles of the canal was still unfinished implies an error of little relative significance. That, exclusive of out-of state traffic and of a thrifty way traffic, there was passing West Troy from or for the Erie canal in 1824 less than 100,000 tons and in 1834 probably half a million tons – and this the product of a single decade – is interpretative of the benefits of the canal to the producers and consumers of the community and to the nation which they served and among those citizens they were numbered. ------------------------------ Specific Instances of Growth along the Canal, especially the Rise of Cities. Perhaps the most striking and dramatic feature of the influence of the canal, and that upon which historians have most delighted to dwell, is the growth of thriving cities along the borders of the waterway. This fact is a mere corollary, not only to the other fact of the remarkable celerity with which mills and factories sprang up and the spinning-jennies and power looms became abundant, but also to the circumstance that extensive areas were being cultivated with grain for the mill or devoted to the production of dairy products for the market, that, in view of improved transportation facilities, the market for local goods came to be the whole sweep of the coast, not merely the immediate community, and that, therefore, commerce was greatly stimulated and the inland villages became shipping centers and grew by mammoth strides. The picture of this growth resembles the ancient myths. It suggests the plain, which, sown with dragon’s teeth, suddenly became alive with an army of men. In order that the fact may serve those who in future would draw inspiration from the past, it must, however, be well proven and well stated. With this object in view we turn to consider the statistical facts. In Professor Tucker’s Progress of the United States in Population and Wealth 64 is to be found a table exhibiting the percentage-growth of the urban population of the country during different decades. From this table it appears that, of the towns having 10,000 inhabitants or more in 1840, there was none in the United States which during the decade 1820-1830 increased as did Rochester, N. Y. That town gained 421 per cent of its initial population during the period, and Buffalo followed second in rate of increase, with 314 per cent. Syracuse seems to have been third (although, probably on account of its late separation from Salina, in 1847, it does not appear in this table). Its gain was 282 per cent. Utica was fourth in the United States, showing an increase of 243 per cent. Even Troy was exceeded in percentage-growth only by the western cities, Louisville and Cincinnati. The subject of the growth of these and other towns along the canal, which today constitute probably the most conspicuous and compact chain of cities in any part of the country, is, especially during this period, inexhaustible. We may, however, touch upon the impressions created upon contemporary travelers and writers by such bewildering growth. Contemporaries may be eye-witnesses and thus, although sometimes over-impassioned, merit an attentive hearing. From the History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley, written by the Rev. Timothy Flint, in 1832, we again quote: "New York, in its whole extent, especially the western part, offers a sample of this order of things particularly to those, who can remember, when the country on the line of the canal, and the beautiful country of the small lakes was all a continuous and unbroken forest. Rochester rises, a proud index of the astonishing changes wrought in this country in a few years." 65 And again: "Rochester . . . has had the most sudden growth of any town in America. In 1812 it was one wide and deep forest; . . . Genesee flour, unknown before the existence of the great canal, in New England, is now the flour of general consumption there." 66 In confirmation of this account it may be said that in 1816 "there were but 331 people where the City of Rochester now stands." Though not incorporated as a village until 1817, it had become by 1838 the shipping point for the wheat of the famous "Genesee country," and, according to statements of contemporaries, the "largest flour-manufactory in the world." 67 Goodenow’s Topographical and Statistical Manual of the State of New York, published in 1822, contains the following: 68 "Syracuse, Buckville, Jordan, Brutus (at Weed’s Basin), Canastota, and other villages have already arisen on the borders of the canal since it was commenced." The "village" of Lockport "contained but 3 families on the 29th of July last [1822]. On the first day of January last (5 months later,) it contained 2 apothecary shops, 4 stores, 5 taverns, sundry groceries and victualling houses, (making 50 buildings in all) and 337 inhabitants, with a regular weekly newspaper!! 69 It is hardly necessary to multiply instances. The fact is well known that the canal made Buffalo 70 and gave it a terminal trade such that today its twenty-eight huge elevators 71 constitute an industry of giant proportions in itself; such that Tonawanda is still, next to New York and Chicago, the greatest shipping point of lumber in the United States. Col. Stone, formerly editor of the New York Commercial Advertiser, found Syracuse in 1820 to be "a few scattered and indifferent wooden houses . . . erected amid the stumps." "It would make an owl weep to fly over it," 72 he declared. Any historian of Syracuse will ascribe the birth of that city to the salt production of the Onondaga Springs and will attribute the principal development of the salt industry to the Erie canal. 73 Farther east the cities of Utica, Albany 74 and Troy 75 acknowledge in the opening of the Erie canal an epoch-making event, charged with immense benefit to them. Table No. 18 serves as an interesting study in this connection. It enables the reader to verify much that contemporaries and subsequent writers have asserted in regard to the sudden and pronounced increase of population of the cities and towns in the canal belt during the early years of the operation of that water-way. In conjunction with the following table it also enables him to note the extent to which this stimulus, imparted in 1820 or 1825, has continued to the present time. This last-mentioned table exhibits the rank of the cities of the state, containing over 25,000 inhabitants in 1900, among the cities of the United States. Three of these cities, it will be seen, fall below the rank of 100; all others well within that number. These three are interior cities, having no water communication. The remaining nine lie upon the one great through waterway from New York to Buffalo. ------------------------------ TABLE OF CITIES IN NEW YORK STATE CONTAINING OVER 25,000 INHABITANTS IN 1900. CITIES. Population. Rank among U.S. Cities. 75a Albany 94,151 43 * Auburn 30,345 139 * Binghamton 39,647 101 Buffalo 352,387 8 * Elmira 35,672 117 New York 3,437,202 1 Rochester 162,608 24 Schenectady 31,682 83 Syracuse 108,374 32 Troy 60,651 55 Utica 56,383 68 Yonkers 47,931 80 * Cities not having canal communication. Not only the centers of population but the outlying portions of the country were benefited by the canal, 76 and reliable local historians do not neglect to dwell upon the subject devotedly in language such as the following: "Wayne County lands, even to the lake shore, appreciated in value; farmers were encouraged to new energy and to extend their planting and sowing; money became more plenty; . . . a new era of prosperity began. . . . Clyde, Lyons, Newark and Palmyra, with other points of shipments in the county, promptly felt the influence of the canal (while Newark may be said to owe its existence to the same influence)." 77 The development of rural and agricultural interests is more forcibly presented in another excerpt, this time from an Orleans county historian. "To no part of the State of New York has the Erie Canal proved of more benefit than to Orleans county," says this historian. "Although the soil was fertile and productive, and yielded abundant crops to reward the toil of the farmer, yet its inland location and great difficulty of transporting produce to market, rendered it of little value at home. Settlers who had located here, in many instances had become discouraged. Others, who desired to emigrate to the Genesee country, were kept back by the gloomy accounts they got of life in the wilderness, with little prospect of easy communication with the old Eastern States. . . . As soon as the Canal became navigable, Holley, Albion, Knowlesville and Medina, villages on its banks were built up. . . . The lumber of the country found a ready market and floated away. Wheat was worth four times as much as the price for which it had been previously selling. Prosperity came in on every hand; the mud dried up, and the musketoes, and the ague, and the fever, and the bears left the country. 78 This is attributing a little more to the canal than is customary. It is not wholly facetious, however, when we reflect that in Buffalo in 1816, "a reward of $5 was voted for every wolf killed in town," 79 and that the canal has served to drain many acres of mosquito-ridden, fever-infested marshes and convert them into wholesome, fertile farm lands. ----------------------------- CONCLUSION. We purpose now to turn away from the consideration of the subject which has occupied our attention throughout this chapter. It may be well to remark that there are some phases of the influence of the canal upon which we have not touched, or to which we have done but meagre justice. We have not delved into the specific instances of the rise of sudden and enduring prosperity through the effects of canal-building. We have not given a word to the political battles waged upon the issue of "Internal Improvements," both in state and nation, and to the impetus afforded that issue everywhere by the success of the Erie canal. We have scarcely hinted at the fact which statesmen and economists have continually averred during the last fifty years, namely, that, had the canal accomplished no direct benefits, its potential possibilities as a public carrier, managed in the interests of the public, have so conserved rates of shipment across the country as to render the waterway indispensable to the nation. We have not studied the "marked influence [it has exerted] on the cost of transportation over all the country extending from the interior of the Gulf States to the Saint Lawrence River, and from the great plains of the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean." 80 We have not considered that "the Erie Canal influences the rates of transportation from Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, etc., to the interior of the Gulf States . . . until it reaches a line where low ocean rates from New York to the Gulf cities . . . exercise their influence upon the rates to the adjacent interior points." 81 "The influence of the Erie Canal as a regulator of freight rates has been felt over the entire country," 82 and our only excuse for omitting a study so attractive is the impossibility of condensing it sufficiently and at the same time doing it justice. It belongs essentially, moreover, to the later period of canal history, through which we have not attempted to follow minutely the career of the great waterway. Unquestionably we have failed to consider and to expand fittingly the study of numerous other influences resulting directly or indirectly from this peculiar institution, which is still in a large sense just as unique and, it would seem, appears to the mind of the people of the State of New York, just as vitally essential to their welfare as it was acknowledged to be fifty and seventy-five years ago. The strength of the popular sentiment in its favor through so many vicissitudes is an established fact, which cannot be ignored. In spite of periods of maladministration, through passing reverses of fortune and amid partisan war-cries, the heart of this great commonwealth has never swayed so far that a reminder of the magnificent services of our historic waterway would not suffice to touch a chord of loyalty. Criticise and argue as we may, the abiding devotion of an intelligent and sovereign people amid the vexations of nearly a century is a splendid tribute. It is, indeed, the surest commendation, the safest human testimonial to the success, utility and importance of the object of their devotion – an argument whose eloquence we certainly can not escape. But the great waterway has well earned the praise and support of the people. This fact, too, is apparent – so apparent that he who runs may read. The world knows that the Erie canal has been a tremendous agency in ranging our State in the forefront of the forces of civilization; that it stimulated the development of the frontier and built up a great industrial zone from east to west and drew unnumbered cargoes to our port and made that port the commercial metropolis of the New World. Like a magnet it attracted to its own shores the mightiest of the transcontinental railroads. Like a weapon in our hands it held these railroads in check, when they had become strong and grasping. It extended our custom far and wide. It gave us the lead in the contest for the supremacy. It broadened us in the school of commercial intercourse. In fact, it made possible that imperial democracy – that Empire State – unique in the annals of the world. But the Erie canal exerted no mean effect upon the nation. Its influence spread beyond and strove to efface our local boundaries and to make of the loose confederation of states and territories one united people. The opening of the canal marks the beginning and was largely the immediate cause of the epoch of emigration from the East and immigration into the West. It was also a signal for the sudden and portentous increase of alien immigration. Its "value to the States bordering on the Great Lakes . . . [in promoting their development was] incomputable." 83 It secured the great Northwest, which once hung in the balance, to eastern rather than to southern sympathies. It prevented trade from following down the St. Lawrence to an outlet in foreign territory. The canal became, indeed, the principal "Gateway to the Interior" – the great artery of inland travel – knitting together the thrifty East and the newly-developing West. All this, which we see realized as we look around us, is a glorious eulogy on the genius and courage and beneficence of our forefathers, who discerned, in advance of their age, the canal, on the one hand, and on the other – prosperous cities, the desert blossoming as the rose, the invigoration of industry, the spread of knowledge, and the dissemination of happiness and plenty. 84 The canal has indeed builded cities and peopled plains. But while the cities and the plains may pass away, the fruits of our education in the broad and humane school of commercial intercourse and the golden ties of kinship and union that it has knit about us will endure. When other memories fail, these forces will still keep alive countless reverberations of the influence of "Our Grand Canal." ------------------------------ NOTE: Since the preparation of this chapter, Secretary of State Elihu Root, at a dinner of the Pennsylvania Society in New York, has given fitting expression to the present tendency toward the principle of increasing the power of the General Government and away from the political doctrine of States’ rights – the theory of government which has been styled "federalism or nationalism or centralized democracy." This modern trend is the outgrowth of an influence chiefly inaugurated by the early improvements in waterways – what we have described as probably the most signal benefit the canal ever bestowed upon the nation – its office in binding together the several sections of our land. Mr. Root said, in part: "We are urging forward in a development of business and social life which tends more and more to the obliteration of State lines and the decrease of State power; the relations of the business over which the Federal Government is assuming control of interstate transportation with State commerce are so intimate, and the separation of the two is so impracticable that the tendency is plainly toward the practical control of the National Government over both. . . . Our whole life has swung away from the old State centers and is crystallizing about National centers; the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, now pursue their respective avocations with reference to the wants of far distant consumers where formerly their activities were devoted to the needs of their home communities. Vast throngs of our people move to and fro from State to State; old State lines are obliterated." – Report of speech in New York Tribune, Dec. 13, 1906.